Blues4Kali-Chapter 0ne:Mahayana

1. Mahayana


I ought to have known it would come to this. The oracle warned me. Crazy Bear said there'd be days like these. As usual, no one believed him. Now, all I want to know is: where is that lifeboat, and how do I ditch this ship of fools, without any of these bliss ninnies noticing that I'm already gone?
What I really need to do is quit counting cards with all these psycho psychics, and find my future freely, unfettered by someone else’s idea of who I’m bound to be. Isn’t that what I was fleeing in the first place? The strangling sense of wrongness that derives from the dictations of others?
And now, a huddled mass of probabilities, waiting to test me across the intersection. The novelty has definitely worn off,  and converting castaways to stowaways has already put us behind the glut of traffic,  as well as reducing the overall standard of life aboard our usually spacious cabin.
Rather than collecting more human souvenirs, I was considering making a few of them walk the plank, but that would hardly be kind, and kindness is written into my job description. Not that any of our itinerants are on a schedule, but if we don’t claim our designated spot by noon, the info booth will be relocated to the nether areas.
Captain, my ass. We are equal in this sea of madness. No matter what some power-tripping hippie says.
Still, I feel like Peter caught with his pants down.
You will deny me three times before the cock grows.
That iceberg is looking awfully big.
Too true, too true. No one really follows all the rules, when no one’s looking. Uncanny, these forecasts of failure. Everyone gets around to falling down, sooner or later.
How easy it would be, just to pretend…
Imagine there were no big Brother
No all-seeing Eye in the sky
So easy to forget the perils of an innocent lie.
The shadowy lump rises, banishing hope that I had spotted a bag of trash awaiting pickup, instead of a rolling stone looking to ride awhile. A mirage would have been welcomer, but may as well face reality, here and now. Price we pay for every new day.
Not a trick of highway hypnosis. Action, then. Do I stop like a good soldier, or do I bypass the mandate, bearing the curses of the forsaken backpacker upon my eternal soul?
Hitchhiker off port bow, Captain. What are your orders, already?
Dilemma. How defiant do I feel? That ugly instant of limbo, where destiny debates while decision awaits. Disregard prophesy, and brace for whatever horrors result. Crap on the cross, just to prove that no thunderbolt strikes.
Or.
Pull over for the camel that broke the straw boss’ back.
No. Absolutely not. No way can I stand one more damned rider today. And a dog to boot?
What I wouldn’t give for a month off from helping these nitwits go nowhere faster.
This has gone too far. Choose it or lose it...
NEVER
         PASS
                             A
                             HITCHHIKER
Every creed carries cumbersome, ritualized regulations. We labor under a minimum of absolutes, having found already the futility of following how-to manuals toward Heaven, or, in West Coast psychic space, “awakening,” whatever that would mean. Awaken from what? Into another new dream?
Enlightenment. That sparkly shiny New Age Aquarian euphemism for “The Product.”
If you knew what that word really meant, you wouldn’t go there. Rotten bloody pit, it is, full of raving moonchildren baying their assorted animal imitations from a sewer tunnel of truth that washes away the waste of floods.
Other world-changers must wrestle with dogma. The nit-picky suggestions that are crafted to be forsaken. Those foolish consistencies which try the faith of the devotees and the patience of the priestly class.
In KALI, we follow Magma. We don’t even pretend to piety. But bets are inviolate, and I wagered Crazy Bear the keys to this bus that I would never abandon a rider along my predetermined path, without dreaming how tempted I would be to get out and walk myself, just to be rid of the noise. Privilege confers responsibility.
Karma chameleons, we must nonetheless commit to our own kind.
The only constant is deviance. Profanity is sacred. And, never, ever, pass by a chance to give an angel in disguise a free lift.
You never know Who might be checking.
Well, sure, that’s Crazy Bear’s first commandment, the superstitious old yenta, but I’m in charge. First principles. When in doubt, figure it out.
Screw protocol. My Moses is off on the Mountain, talking to burnt-out bushes. He can keep his damned impossible pronouncements. Why should I be the only one bending over backward? That Golden Calf is looking better and brighter every day.
And I have possession of the pedal. Nine-tenths rule.
Power flows from the barrel of a carburetor. Ultimately, the power to dictate the course of our journey rests more with the helm than the admiralty. Besides, what does the Fool expect? The primary qualification for leadership is an intrinsic inability to obey.
Tripped-out Trustafarian left me to tend to his destiny while he’s busy playing psychedelic playboy, paying us in profound promises to work out his karma for him here in crumbling Babylon, while he putters around Peru, experimenting with fancy entheogenic plants and consorting with shamans to penetrate the pyramid pattern.
He doesn’t have to endure the dozen-and-a-half raggedy sign-slingers and threadbare thumbers already stinking up the schoolbus and giving my head a world-class ache, with their dumpsterdove wardrobes and noxious habits.
I’ve just about had it. For real. One more, and I’ll scream. No shit.
Despite the official KALI poly-see of universal acceptance, I am starting to find myself intolerant of these freeloaders, with their overloud gutter-gravelly voices stuck on repeat, as our uncomplimentary complement rings with dissonance, good-natured and half-hearted attempts to scold puppies named after Grateful Dead songs, for public urination, or, in an ironic twist of comic hypocrisy, for “begging.”
What to do when some pierced troglodyte knocks around an infant canine for yapping after snickers and ho-hos deemed too elite for the bellies of burdensome beasts, while the humans tactfully look the other way as a fellow hitchhiker, complaining loudly of the meatlessness onboard, has been unsubtly “reappropriating” my “secret” stash of homesmoked tofu jerky, before I’ve had even a bite?
Damn kids! Unbelievable. How did I get myself into this mess?
The child will embarrass his mother and kill his bother…
This is why Priestesses had to get stark raving stoned before dishing Delphi’s pronouncements to the marks. Drive you mad with contradictions, otherwise. And no one wants to believe that Last Supper callout. Hurts not to be trusted. Even more to be entrusted with a left-handed proviso that I am not nearly worthy of it.
Which puts me in a no-win bind. Because if I lack faith in Crazy Bear’s vision, what am I doing here at all? For that matter, why did he assign me to run things, if he was really convinced I would end up resigning?
Prove me wrong, witch. You always have that option. Sincerely hope that you do.
Even the primal Mugwai admits that his predictions taste better with a shot of salty soy sauce. No one’s perfect, especially those who claim to be. And then he wanders off to consult his charts, mumbling something about glimpsing alternate quantum paradigms.
After all, his posted batting average on verified precognition lately dipped below .800, when the train went off the rail in Spain, earning our leader a lively roasting on Holy Fool’s day. He’d called the attack for Italy. All of us lowly neophytes trotted out our patented Crazy Bear impressions that day. High comedy, low humor. He had to sit there, grinning stupidly, but the wrinkles of worry beneath his eyes betrayed dismay.
The Lead Luna-tic himself, in a fit of pique, once claimed he would retire when his record dipped so low, which, predictably, put the estimating prophet in the terrible position of changing his flexible mind.
Crazy Bear persevered, ignoring the hecklers, and so will I. Can’t give him the satisfaction. Knock that cocky bastard down to fifty-fifty, if I have to be an angel to do it.
Rules are rules, after all, and graceless leaders, who won’t abide the regulations beneath which everyone else labors, deserve mutiny. That’s Magma. Self-evident, but must be stated anyway, to remind the memory-impaired. Go ahead and lynch me already. Who needs this authority role play, anyway?
Rather be the bad girl for the rest of the ride, but everyone grows up someday.
May as well be today. Here we go. Welcome to hotel hippie Hell.
On the roads of life, there are many pitfalls as well as potholes. Some are strewn along the concrete, others inside the bus. And the most dangerous lurk inside the driver hirself.
This is what I get for taking the road more traveled.  For all its faults, an idyllic ride along the rolling cliffs of Highway 1 would be less littered with vagabonds. When my precognition and driving get better, I’ll foresee the dotted deadheads before we hit the highway, and ride the white-knuckle coastal gauntlet instead, like Neal Cassidy. No shoulders means no thumbers.
The brainless drainbow didn’t even leave enough room for a VW bug to safely pull over, let alone our thirty-foot blue submarine. No jury in the land would convict me if I just…kept…rolling…sorry, kid, too much momentum…
“Althea! No groundscores! Go! Kick it down. Down!”
Still, I have come too far now to forget the energy boomerang such selfishness always ensures, and, besides…I did promise Crazy Bear.
The patron prophet of  KALI would read about my flyby in his morning tea leaves, not to mention a whole pantheon of supersensitive Goddesses who would recall the neglected stragglers, stranded by indifference and indulgent self-pity, the next time I called upon any of Her for aid.
What excuse could I offer for my conscious callousness, when I stand before the scales of Maat on Judgment Day?
Certainly don’t need any krappy karma or a jumbo-sized order of guilt on the side, so I grind my teeth
…and the bus…
to a halt, honking and skidding into the diminishing shoulder of  southbound Highway 101 at the last conceivable instant. Well, may as well. Can’t really get any worse.
Breaking our stride has to be worth the heartwarming spectacle of the grateful boy with his miniature mastodon skipping up the gravel, kicking up a cloud of dust and pebbles in their haste to take their place on the train to Jordan.
Or was it the highway to Hel? I forget.
Otherwise, why were we thus cosmically paired? There are no accidents, and coincidence is always meaningful. How Magmatic!
Now comes the hard part. Where will we put this mystery?
Overbooked on this flight, the bus resembles a fire marshal’s sweatdrenched nightmares, crammed to the rafters with ticketless deadheads. Maybe I’m doing penance for past-life slum-lording.
Fully half of our human passengers accompany their canine masters on this pilgrimage to the unholy Shitty, and blood has already been shed several times in squabbles over mutual edibility between much smaller specimens. The dogs are feisty, too.
Flipping open the door, I spin about in the captain’s chair to shout warning at all the dogslaves loafing in the back. “Hey! Wake up back there and be on point! Brontosaurus on board! Keep hold of your leashes or collars or whatever,” I yell over the chatter of heedless hitchhikers, “if you don’t want your pet to become someone’s dogfood! Everybody take a step back…and then another step back…and then another.”
These unheard, unprojected, and poorly scripted directions do nothing to make space onstage for these new extras to enter the scene, so I summon my soulmate for backup. When all else fails, count on your bedtime buddy to lend a hand.
She always owes me one.
“Hey! Cherie! Help me regulate on this insanity already, will you? Can you get some more kids piled on the bed back there? We have to make room for Abu and his elephant here.”
Overcome with joy, the oversized dog tackles his laughing friend, pummeling him to the pebbles, while we choreograph a crowded clown act to accommodate them. Cute. This should be typical. Another endearing predictable fuck-up, plaguing my most definitely sub-saint patience.
Ms. Get’erdone always comes through for us, as a rule. Seriously. If she can’t direct internal traffic sufficiently slick to shoehorn another fleabitten pair onto the trip, she should resign her responsible post as recruitment coordinator for KALI. Talents are like assholes; they only function when flexible, flowing and loose.
Love that Magma. Don’t have to be a rabbi to understand straight shit like that.
“Move it, Momma! I’m getting mobbed up here.” How much harder to help than be helped!
Thin ice, girlfriend. Leaving me hanging in the sack is one thing. Shirking the Mission is quite literally another. That, I take personal. Wouldn’t be who I am, if I didn’t. Get Her Done!
Will Che appeal to their collective conscience, guilting the huddled masses into making way? Or will she whip out one of her patented pranks, to redistribute the mess of smelly humanity? Either way, the problem is in surer hands than mine. Cherie is a bona fide mistress at the art of bossiness.
“Well, part of the problem is this big, empty bed! Why hasn’t anyone started a massage chain yet back here? I wanna see a daytime cuddle puddle right now! What kind of hippies are you? Come on, now. Let’s go! Everyone pile up in the back of the bus!” she commands, to the extreme glee of some copiously unwashed folk I’d just as soon not have groping my girlfriend in our sleeping space.
No arguing with success, though, despite triumph’s transient and illusory nature. The beleaguered pair loads up, before the swelling tide of humanity washes back to the cab and forces them to retreat.
Unable to advance after all, despite Cherie’s heroic efforts, the two stake out the stairwell, blocking the exit for the time being. A clear violation of safety regulations, but such is life straddling the curve of the Sacred Chao. Situation Normal, All Fogged Up.
So much for the fire marshal. Good thing our mechanical speed limit keeps us well below the legal one. Hate to have to explain this surrealism to an officer of Babylon.
The protect/serve crowd might offer to help us thin out our bursting population. Assholes. They have guns and paddy wagons, but they won’t get at my kids during my watch, no matter how bad they smell. Family is Family.
On the road again. Pleased to be departing, for the fifth time this morning, from Mendocino’s middle realm, dubbed “SchWillits” for the shady and swilly who frequent the stopover, I engage the engine and return our rumbambulating expedition to the flow of traffic. The new rider, precariously perched, loses balance and falls more or less on top of me.
Far from the typical dazed drunk we’ve generally been hosting today, this one exudes an Asian gentility and a shockingly genial odor. Like the way glass might smell, if it did.
Definitely not bad, for a boy at least. His alert, smiling eyes set like dark garnets in his clear copper sculpture face, beguiling my femininity out of habit more than interest. Come-to-my-tent eyes.
The new debut bears a radiant, violet Kirilian haze, matching a mop of semidreaded black locks, peeking out from beneath his backward Be Good Family hat and tickling the thick hemp choker chafing his reddening neck.
Then, the funniest thing…
Though I should be at least glancing at the highway, our liquid lightsensors lock and I’m lost in his world. Let the small and weak make way for the mighty Mystery machine.
I’ve been here before. An eternity passes as the rider extracts himself from my lap, and the bus drives itself as we struggle to disengage. Mahayana moves unimpeded on pure faith, as I leisurely appraise the stranger with whom I am suddenly so familiar.
The backside of his baby blue cloth overcoat bears a Sri Yantra mandala and an eerie, extraterrestrial energy. As I gaze into the timeless sacred geometry, I feel drawn into its whirling mystery, overcome by the anonymous attraction between us.
Overall, he emanates an appealing androgyny and crafty confidence that strokes my cat, whether I find it in a physique equipped with an innie or an outtie. Belly buttons or genitalia, gender alone really is a trivial reason to exclude such a beautiful being from bed.
I could go there. In a different dimension. If I did not have a girlfriend…
Back to reality. What am I thinking? He’s not even my type. Instead of shouldering his own backpack, his massive animal companion is loaded down, like a pack mule, with items meaningful only to humans. What other animal feels so helpless without a stash of collected objects? Humans are so lame. Next species, please.
None of my affair. The road beast seems free to leave if dissatisfied, bringing along his human’s spare stuff wherever destiny leads, in a rather tragicomic flash of ironic justice. I’d absolutely love to see the look on his face when that development turns the tables.
Here we go again. I hate introductions, where strangers exchange the most superficial details of ego data while concealing our inner nature, but it comes with the territory I cover.
“My name is ‘Amana,’” I repeat obligatorily, for the fifteenth frustrating time today, as each of us regain our compromised composure, “and the bus is called, Mahayana. The ‘Big Vehicle,’ get it? We’re on a peace mission. Hail and welcome. Please observe our preference that you not consume powder drugs or meat in our home, or leave any trash.”
What else? “Oh, and do everyone a favor and feed your dog friend from the communal supply while on board, not canned scrap meat-or the other riders. There’s a throwdown stash behind my seat. Help yourself.”
“Thanks. I generally do. You can call me, ‘Adam,’” he flirts pleasantly over the din of the recently resuming bus and her occupants, pressing palms together before his sweatstreaked face like a psychedelic monk. “This big heartbreaker here goes by ‘Doobie Scoo.’ Don’t listen to him when he says you’re his one and only; he’s got one in every port.”
Charmed, I’m sure. Mirrors everywhere. Like married humans, road dogs always capture the essence of their companion’s foibles. Supersized egos adapt to each other out of necessity.
Domestication is egomania in action.
Continuing his rapid, manic rap, Adam traces a quick pentacle in the air using his index finger, a gesture which reminds me of the way devout Catholics carelessly cross themselves to commemorate occasions of personal sanctification and guard against evil.
“Namaste! Many blessings, for you and your crew. May the Holy Eye take note of your kindness, and reward you generously for giving sanctuary to a wanderer. Om Shakti Ganesha Lakshmi Om.” He smiles. “There. I ordered you good fortune.”
“So mote it be,” I quietly agree.
“I thought I’d have to grow tits to get a ride. This highway is absolutely lousy with kids headed to Synergy!” He domes his palms over his nascent nipples to dramatize the horrible fate I’d rescued him from. Cute. Great way to score points with me, kid.
Try it for ten years of monthly swelling, daily crass commentary, and unceasing harassment. Large breasts cause stupidity. In other people. Complementing my mammoth mammaries is like insulting the rest of me.
Nevertheless, a shocking number of degenerates feel possessed to call my unwilling attention toward my chest, often merely to notify me of my mountains’ impressive size.
Oh my! They are big, aren’t they? I never noticed. Must have happened only a minute ago. Thanks for getting me up to speed on that. I was simply dreading passing my whole life as a two-back. Guess I’d better go buy a bra now.
Lousy, indeed. “You’re telling me! I was thinking of billing CalTrans for services rendered, the way we’re cleaning up the one-oh-one. Call us the Hobo Express.”
Adam takes stock of the technicolored clusterfuck behind me. “So all of you happy campers are headed to the festival in Golden Gate Park?” he probes presumptively. No point in denying it. I agree noncommittally, annoyed.
Kid could learn a thing or two about making friends on this bus. First, kick the sexism. Lesson two: do not refer to me as a “happy camper.” Especially on this rotten bullshit lameass day.
“Any particular whatfor? Or is this just a party scene?” Strike three. Sorry kid, you’re out. Already irritating, it’s almost as if he’s been speed-reading a textbook on my pet peeves. Even well-intentioned interrogation bothers me like no other common social vice.
Time to kill the chit-chat, before I get rude. Not his fault I’m in such a piss poor mood. Just having a hard time loving my species today.
Birthdays are like that for me.
“We’re on a mission,” I explain again tersely, staring ahead. “Promoting peace,” I amend, more a message for myself than him. But I can’t hang with him in this headspace.
I leave it at that, connection cut. My silence speaks for me, and he hastily gets the point, recovering a little lost ground with me. So few people can take a hint!
Sowing greener pastures, and spotting a free patch of bed, where the steamy cuddle puddle is proceeding with an abandon I cautiously ignore, Adam climbs eagerly over several heads to claim his human cushion, leaving me to my driving and thoughts.
Zen Master, how can I soar with the eagles when I have turkeys always begging a lift?
Dharma, pure and simple. May as well be a good sport about it; there is no escaping the duty of tending toddler spirits. Cosmic babysitting. The Bodhisattva chauffeurs the Big Vehicle across the energetic ether, as all sort of childish souls cling to her, seeking enlightenment under Maya’s million guises and yet never knowing that illumination is all we ever truly seek.
As Crazy Bear solemnly warned when handing over the keys and the immense responsibility of his vision for what we were to do with them, this mission is metaphor and memory for the accelerated hyperreality, predicted to follow this preparatory phase of flesh.
It’s all part of the scribe’s semisane scheme for evolution beyond the age of Reason, the plan that I serve in spite of my misgivings, because between his manic proclamations rings an undeniable truth.
The aging coffee shop Jewru’s tongue vibrates with the conviction of inside information as he demystifies the mystical. Cunning linguist, that one. Or so I have been given to understand. Rainbow rumours are so unreliable. Never trust a Trustafarian.
All so very obvious, the estimated prophet likes to say.
The guiding theory is that our lessons and lives are constructing the recollections and temperament of the Star we are destined to collectively spark, when the skin addiction plays out, and the elements are aligned for ignition of the planetary parts.
Individual bioentities can be considered self-aware specialized neurons connecting the collective consciousness of an embryonic stellar soul.
We’re manufacturing the memories of God. What we imagine to be our struggles for sustenance and success now are the stories which stream simultaneously before the Eye of Ain Soph, which in a different Now is being born, and in another Now recounting our adventures in the flash of reflection accompanying the death of the Star We Are.
Every choice represents a vote for a kinder or crueler Nirvana.
For the handpicked crew of ambassadors managing Mahayana and spreading her message, awareness amplifies the effect. Electing to stand for love and light carries the obligation to live it, or face the fate of the hypocrite.
Couriers of consciousness expansion, each of us becomes a focal point in the struggle between self and soul, as Ourstory winds down to its climactic commencement.
Even the most trivial errors can blow back on the awakening Buddha. The Bodhisattva trip is a trap. Enlightenment consists primarily of a shocking satori, exposing the stupidity of every prior choice.
Welcome to the Karma Cola world of rolling the immovable rock up the insurmountable mountain. Peak experience, indeed.
Privilege
Negotiating the ethical minefield of everyday elections constitutes training for the rapid-fire test we All will face when we confront each other, naked soul by soul, for Judgment Day celebrations. Hence the vital importance of our salvage efforts.
Better Brahma’s million manifestations coiling about in the celestial Spiral Dance remember me kindly when we assess Ourselves; better still that these embryonic Enlightenments be nursed with exemplars who serve with a smile. If I don’t Love this, why am I doing it?
confers
Driving. Thoughts. So intertwined, after six months meandering with Mahayana along her overworked itinerary of counterculture concerts, communes, and collective complaints against the war machine. As this experiment hurtles forward in space, I find myself moving more in terms of mind, zooming effortlessly into realms no earlier experiences led me to expect to exist.
The map, to me, no longer depicts physical locales, so much as vibratory states of existential awareness, a schematic of Her Spirit, rather than an arrangement of legal labels, assigned to every part of the Mother by those who seek to control Her.
responsibility
Kalifornia, certainly, is a state of mind. The end of the road, as it were, brimming with those who came up against the Void and found they could run no further from their problems. Stolen land, heisted and shysted over and again. Greedy for gold, every exploiter trod upon this ground and claimed it with names, first in Spanish, then with Oklahoma quaintness.
Welcome to Hopland.
Nowadays the fortune-hunters come seeking nuggets of shimmering cannabis- renewable, sustainable green gold, clutching their trim scissors instead of dipping pan, but even still, only one in ten will come up as they dreamed. The balance will barge manically about the largely redneck and outsider-sensitive rural widespots in a vain quest for work, which as far as these shiftless streetkids can tell is nothing more than a local codeword for garden duty.
For a growing small-minded segment of the counterculture, clipping buds for twenty tax-free dollars an hour is just the Manna from hippie Heaven they’ve been holding out for, in order to finance that hegira to Holland or hedonistic heyday in Hawaii.
As in all things, the Wheel of Karma spins for some, and rolls over others.
Some will be successful in landing the coveted contract, and happily trim marijuana for a month, before being run off by an armed grower who decided not to pay the inflated scale after all.
And some will wind up in the river for having unauthorized access to the bounty of the Harvest.
By and large, these are the kids burdening us today, the waste product of the work migration that infects the counterculture each autumn, as the bliss ninnies and water-treading grasshoppers realize that with winter looming, they’d best come up and with a quickness.
Chronically unemployable, even within the underground economy, because of how alienated they are from what work is for, they solicit each other for help in everything, even failure.
Drainbows. Free lunch as lifestyle option. The blind begging the stupid. I want to shake these kids, wake them from their dependent stupor. Somehow these “hippies” never grasp why they are repeatedly passed over for the abundant trim work, even after laying around for weeks in front of the small growingtown grocery grouped in large, dirty bands.
So there they sit, season after season, flashing annoyingly alliterative, unsubtle “WILL WORK FOR WEED” signs, scribbled on cardboard boxes with crudely drawn scissors and unconvincing marijuana leaves, while unwittingly harassing for spare change and pot the very growers they seek to impress with their work ethic and reliability.
Everyone just wishes they’d go away; they’d want it themselves, if they’d snap out of their lazy daze long enough to want better than bumming. Sooner or later, they do what birds do, where the climate suits the clothes.
No point in being bitter about it. Scruffy streetkids are Family, like it or not. It’s a phase. Psychedelic infancy. Dropped out but not tuned in. And every once in a while, one of these kids will show you hir pure crystal light through the layers of dumpster grime and proudly recycled rags, and you know that tomorrow, that one will be driving the bus.
In the strangest of places, if you look at it right.