.

The Journal of a Perimeter Man

Vol. IV

Metaphor Bridge

By

Jann Burner

WARNING

This book comes with a warning for anyone under the age of twenty one. If you are unused to, or against the process of having your mind or imagination stimulated then I would read no further. Resist the urge to peek, you are in serious danger of having your mind “Tweaked” over the course of reading this slim volume.

Introduction

The Manipulation of Metaphors

Sharing common knowledge in an uncommon manner

"Our situation (this thing we call life) may not only be stranger than we suppose; it may be stranger than we can suppose."

A paraphrase from British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane

Think of this like a Rock Concert or a Concept Album from the 60’s hiding in the back of your parent’s closet. Think of this as a hypnotic induction. For the next six hours there is nothing going on outside of you, just your mind and the words on the following pages. Think of yourself like an early explorer and you have just discovered a long lost treasure. In your hands is a small time capsule and in it is the blood, sweat, tears and reflections of a human who lived a long time ago. Now…get very relaxed.

The following images and ideas are metaphors from one man’s life. They are not held to be hard truth in the empirical sense, more these metaphors are meant to be truth sensors. When a specific metaphor and a reader's personal experience close, they set up a vibrational resonance. When the "resonance" is first felt one might note a feeling that "this makes sense". As the vibrational field continues to close one might begin to see the particular matrix of metaphors as "true". Then comes the "Ah ha…" feeling which means that one might notice a slight "déjà vu" feeling as if the "idea" or metaphor stream is more than objectively true, it becomes an "inner truth". And then, if the metaphor bridge arches from the printed page directly into the reader's heart, it becomes intimately personal and is capable of dissolving long held frozen emotion resulting in tears, shaking, or other signs of physical discharge.

Metaphors are names and symbols which mark something and allow it to stand for something else. Metaphors have symbolic meaning often above and beyond the named object or emotional state. As humans we come into a chaotic world. Those who have come before have given "things" names, and for us, these "things" become the names and these names have powerful symbolic value.

For an example The Internet, one might say, is a metaphor for an Overmind, a vast cybernetic net of metaphor thrown over civilization at large; an active matrix of ideas and images commonly shared by the composite human mind and available to individuals throughout the world, regardless of caste, color, religion, gender of financial status. This is the true democratization of the metaphor. No longer is it limited by mere language, intellectual caste or economic privilege.

The purpose of a Metaphor Bridge is to better align Spirit, Mind and Body, through the use of metaphors, in order to create a Bridge between the Spirit and the physical body of the reader. The brain merely serves as the control room where the screen of recognition is housed. We all know lots of things. We know more than any human in history. We know more than we will ever have reason or need to know. In our culture we stand beneath a constant shower of information, but we are seldom moved to "own" our knowledge. Our wisdom, knowledge and beliefs are like a closet of clothes with the price tags still attached. They are lacking in true ritual or value. Because information is so easily assimilated we tend to dismiss its intrinsic value. To follow the "clothes" metaphor, we try them on and then hang them back in our closet with the intention of wearing them at some point in the future, should they become "in fashion". But the understanding is that these metaphorical clothes can always be returned if un-worn. We don't have to "own" them. Sort of like our jobs, relationships, cars or cats, they can be exchanged, co-mingled or abandoned.

The purpose of a Metaphor Bridge is to communicate commonly held knowledge in an uncommon manner so that by the time the "reader" passes over the bridge they will be closer to "owning" that which they already know and posses. Reality, after all, is merely a group consensus. We give something a "name", and as a culture we agree on that symbolic name and so…it IS valued.

My intention with the metaphorical offerings within this slim volume is to create a bridge for your Spirit to walk over. It is not the content nor the political slant that is important, nor even the creative ability exhibited within the juxtaposition of the words upon the page. It is instead, a process as old as Man: the naming and claiming of reality, metaphor by metaphor. This is the Metaphorical Imperative, as strong as the drive for food or water. This quest, which has driven the human race from the very beginning, is, in the final analysis, the quest for the seed of Truth.

The volume in your hand is a journal, a collection of mostly short pieces originally published in many different venues. These bits of “common knowledge, shared in an uncommon manner,” cover a wide range of topics dealing with one Perimeter Man’s life experience. These include reflections on things spiritual and philosophical as well as my take on the craft of writing, my observations from behind the steering wheel of absolute reality and a few short fiction pieces. Certain images, phrases and metaphors are repeated. This is intentional, like the repeated phrasing of a song.

Contents

THOUGHTS IN A TAXI AT NIGHT

Blind Babies Bazaar

I have been sitting in the rear of Zim's restaurant for the past ten years wearing dark glasses and sucking up cups of coffee like they were spare galaxies and my mouth a ravenous black hole in deep space. In vain attempt at directed discovery I have dragged my soul carelessly through captured dreams.

Outside, above the late night oily slick Frisco pavement a large, dark bird shutters low over the horizon, while on the corner, across the street, waiting for the light to change, a taxi driver angrily chews on the scraps of a yellowed wing...

The air about me reeks of speed, sweat and stale wine. My own physical self smells like burnt sulfur. What a distracting scab! It is indeed unfortunate that they are still being issued to earthly dreamers like uniforms.

I am a mute. I sing for the entertainment of the deaf, the dumb and the blind. I am a vendor at the Blind Babies Bazaar. I sell rides to plump tourists from the outback.

I was once a good soldier, one of the walking dead. I often marched along within the neon plastic grooved rings of Mars on the lip of Aphrodite's visor like a summer moth through a screen door--silently. I was a noncommissioned officer in the army of the ages passing through Eternity...

Quantum foam, light-cone, wilderness home; I wield my thoughts like a tongue. Sometimes when I look in the mirror I see the fly-catcher lizard, and he is hungry. Other times I see the condemned prisoner politely requesting a doggie bag with his last meal. Descriptions and concepts are quickly passed around and about like hives of gold.

My waitress approaches across the floor like a Seventh Day Adventist hustling Watch Tower Magazine on death row--slowly and without much conviction. She balances my short stack of hot-cakes before her, carefully. My Market Street Madonna with her jaunty waitress cap moves toward me like the fin of a shark through shallow water.

At one time I was quite a humorist. In those days my idea of a natural man was someone who had no further use for toilet paper. Times change. All I've ever really wanted was to keep myself amused and to have a good friend to bless me when I sneeze. And perhaps to be a national literary hero. To wear honor's helmet I would have been willing to go wide in the water. To wear the robes of grace I would have been willing to traverse the very retina of the mind's eye. At one time I would have gladly been an optimistic spirit; an igniter of stars...and the dead.

My food arrives. I slowly lift the syrup container and allow the strawberry-colored fluid to ease out and over my short stack. Beneath the neon glare the syrup flows smoothly over my pancakes--my plate; over my table, over my lap, down the rusty chrome chair leg and out and over the bright white tile floor. The tension spring at the top of the strawberry syrup dispenser seems to be broken.

Somewhere behind me, hovering in the dusk, a giant blue whale tugs gently at the strings of my mask threatening my anonymity. Will it be Captain Midnight or the Masked Outsider? The decaying scorpions all bloated with lust twist slowly on their trunks in order to view the strangeness and the strawberry syrup. The ragged ginseng smelling poet of the Blind Babies Bazaar is not concerned. To the beatific fluidity of one soul dreaming its own transformation it is ALL just so much strawberry syrup. When The Outsider is set free--so is The Captain.

I stand to leave and carefully place two shiny new quarters on the table. They both quickly sink from sight in the pool of strawberry fluid. At the door I hesitate and turn back towards my table, perhaps fifty cents was not sufficient. My Market Street Madonna glides past silently, unconcerned. Her soul dreams of its own transformation. On her chest, immediately above her left nipple, rides a hefty black plastic name tag: CYN CLITTON.

I close the door and step from the valley of darkness holding my breath, watching all the corners of the sudden light and at once step back for a moment's breath, a sigh, a whistle and then on I move, into the murky brightness of the neon town, trying to drown myself in the vapors of civilization.

I am a thirty-nine year old ecstasy addict strung out on peak experience singing for the entertainment of the deaf, the dumb and the blind. I am a vendor at the Blind Babies Bazaar, and sometimes, as I graze on the open wounds of realization that bite deeply into the furrows of my being I feel like God's own Angels are making pee-pee in my hair.

But then, what do I know? I am just a cab driver. My thoughts often get entangled in my mind´s hair like stale gum. What can I say except that I am involved. I am a prober of an emotional universe. I am involved because my pain is workable flesh. But it is not important. The beatific fluidity of one soul dreaming its own transformation is not concerned.

"It is all just so much strawberry syrup," say us vendors at the Blind Babies Bazaar.

THE TAXI GAME

Part One

"Life is easy when you've got new tread."

In San Francisco, on the West coast of America in the state of California, there used to be a group of individuals called taxi drivers. For a very small fee they would be with you in their vehicle. They would transport you wherever you wished to go. They would talk, they would listen, they would even carry your baggage. In those days most of these people were writers, poets, old hippies, recovering substance abusers, out of work musicians or recent immigrants to this wonderful land. Dreamers one and all, the best and often some of the brightest fruit left unpicked upon the societal tree, turning slowly to sugar and threatening to rot and stain the ground.

In those days, an urban taxi driver made more life and death decisions than a $150,000 per year airline pilot, and yet he flew alone and got paid little more than the allowable minimum. He received no raises, no retirement, no medical coverage, nor even any workman's compensation and was treated by public and private citizen alike as a felon on parole. In those long ago days the taxi driver was, at one and the same time, victim and potential threat. He was often abused, verbally and sometimes physically, by passengers, fellow drivers, the police and passing strangers in the grip of a bad day. He received no ego strokes behind the wheel. Any satisfaction from the job he received had to be generated from within. He was in the truest sense, an urban bracero, a fisher of men on mean streets wearing a coat of many cars.

I used to be one of these men. I drove a taxi cab on the night shift in San Francisco. I drove first for Sunshine Cab and then Veterans and finally Yellow Cab. I drove over 3,000 ten hour shifts behind the wheel of absolute reality. All I might add, without getting wrecked or robbed. This was back during the Golden Years of taxi driving between 1975 through 1985. Rent was cheap and one could cover expenses with a good weekend.

During my years behind the wheel, the taxi cab became my office. I sat in there for eight to ten hours per night. I had conversations (sometimes quite intimate) with strangers while the backdrop of one of the world's most beautiful cities slid by outside. These strangers would then bid me goodbye and place money in my hand.

Driving a taxi, I often found that after about six hours in the driver's seat a strange phenomena would begin to occur. It was as if I was sitting at home perfectly still, and a holographic projection of The City was flowing around me. No sense of movement, totally centered, no sense of motion or even thought. The closest most people ever come to this clear zone, is when they are about to become involved in an accident. At such times that moment of clarity, the "center point" is often reported, just before the crash.

Emotionally, I found taxi driving to be neutral. It wasn't oppressive like I imagine working in a factory or a bank might be and it wasn't so thrilling that one would want to devote their free time and energy to it. It was…as the Buddhists might say…a left handed sort of a job. It allowed me to support myself and yet it really didn't interfere with my life. It left me--free. It left me enough time and energy to pursue the real interests in my life. With energy and curiosity and persistence, I found that it was quite possible to develop an entire bouquet of other interests.

Driving a taxi, for me in San Francisco, was an ongoing experiment in self discovery. It was an eccentric job that offered very wide perimeters. It gave me lots of leeway. It gave me the freedom to re-invent, re-imagine (or destroy!) myself every day. I spend perhaps sixty seconds with an authority figure receiving the waybill and small metal taxi medallion like some sort of unholy communion wafer, and then I was out on the streets, on my own--FREE! No boss, no supervisor, no one to tell me what to do. If I didn't want to work, I didn't have to. But this also meant that no one cared what I did. It was a two edged sword. I could end up drunk every day…behind in my rent, and suffering terribly from the lack of ego-stroking that goes on in most normal lines of employment. In order to survive and thrive in this sort of work environment, I had to have a very well defined sense of "who" I was. For self originating sorts of individuals who had more need of freedom than money and position, the art of Vehicular Tai Chi as practiced by driving a taxi could be very worthwhile.

The whirring of the tires on the late night asphalt, the blur of pedestrian faces through the glass induced in me a blissful vacancy of mind that has no real equivalent in civilian life. For me, driving cab was part martial arts, part meditative practice and part graduate school, sort of a graduate school of mind. It satisfied my voyeuristic impulses, fed my reclusive nature and inspired me to look deeply into the "why" of all things.

During my years of focused concentration behind the wheel I became a practitioner of what I call Motor Zen. Taxi driving very closely approximated the formal practice of Zazen. The driver had his seat cushion, his formal sitting position and in place of the white meditation screen he had the white city backdrop and instead of a Zen koan he had the mindless chatter from the rear seat and the endless circuits around and around the city…for ten hours at a time, looking for meaning. "Why am I doing this?"

But unlike ashram Zen, Motor-Zen carried some serious risks. The price for inattention was often severe. Sometimes it resulted in the destruction of the vehicle within which the body resided. Sometimes it resulted in the destruction of the body itself. No mere swat of a stick over the shoulders as in the Zendo. And the "Makyo" encountered in the safety of the meditation hall was nothing compared to the phantoms encountered out on the street behind the wheel of the speeding metal sled and in the back seat, not to mention those found in the deepest recesses of the mind after a late night shift when the questor lay curled alone in a cold metal bed, in a small rented room in a cheap hotel, wondering…

Often in the taxi, I was privy to deep discussions and questioning. Over the years the most recurrent theme either stated directly or implied was simply:

"Why am I here? (in this life, in this body, at this time). What is it that I am supposed to be doing?"

Be they doctor, lawyer or Indian chief the general consensus seemed to be that "that" (whatever that was), was not what they were really supposed to be doing. Seems we are all spear carriers in someone else's opera. All except for me, at that time I was The Driver. For that period of my life I seemed to have a back-stage pass.

From picking up people night after night I came to notice a growing restlessness in the population, a spiritual uneasiness. It was as if we were all waiting for something to happen, waiting for the weather to change.

I contend that the mechanism of consciousness is not fully understood. I believe that the brain, the Mind and the Spirit may have some surprises in store for us yet. But then, what did I know? I was just a cab driver. My thoughts often became entangled in my mind's hair like stale gum. After all is said and done, what are we anyway, except fictional creatures--figments, traces of spark and color from The Great Imagining in search of a worthy story.

THE TAXI GAME

Part Two

Like big boats playing shark in shallow water these large bumper cars traveled the coastal streets of late San Francisco. Their steering wheels all black crusty plastic spinning first this way and then around the corner between the bread truck and the bus and--watch the old man crossing the street at Jones and O'Farrell! A large human hand reaches out from the curb and grabs for the driver's attention--the Hilton hotel is just ahead--maybe a ride to Mill Valley waiting? The large humanoid hand anxiously waves from the curb. Did the driver see it? Just a few more feet and...Jesus, what a line at the hotel! A quick check in the rear view mirror--no traffic! The driver skids to a stop, snaps the transmission into reverse--breaks, pops open the rear door and a young big breasted hustler with eyes like rusty bolts slides thigh flashing in and says, "to the airport please..."

In a sea of humanity anxiously rushing about on important missions, I had discovered that the Cab Driver was king. Not many spectators or even fares were aware of this. Some pointed to the bus, but a bus, like a train, was captive of a route. A taxicab was free. Nobody, least of all other spectator drivers, fucked with taxis. They knew that the typical cab driver had no "pride" of ownership, no morals and quite obviously no sense or why would an adult person be engaged in such an occupation?

In San Francisco there were almost as many cab drivers as there were policemen. Their rate of pay, though, was considerably less, but then people who drove taxis were not in it for the money. As far as I had been able to deduce, cab drivers were game players and The Taxi Game was a general growth game designed to test player alertness, sense of humor and overall sanity. The Taxi Game was played upon a specially designed game board situated upon a small peninsula of land which some choose to call San Francisco. Upon this peninsula the Supreme Adult Gaming Authority (SAGA) had seen fit to lay out hundreds and hundreds of roads, streets, avenues, alleys, lanes and ways--all with confusing names, nicknames and foreign pronunciations. Along these highways, by-ways and back alleys, SAGA had constructed semi-realistic looking houses, apartments and businesses. Every single building, business and/or vacant space had been given a numerical designation. These came in handy in trying to connect a real fare with his or her desired destination.

The designers of the game had gone all out to import almost 800,000 semi-realistic looking spectators. These spectators were divided into two major categories: fares and pseudo fares. Out of the 800,000 spectators there were only five thousand real fares. The rest were merely third-class spectators outfitted to look like real fares. Their job was to make--the player--take the game as seriously as possible. They would heckle, complain, insult, compliment, rob, maim and/or murder.

The five thousand real fares were in turn subdivided into three categories, the first of which might be termed Fun Fares. An attractive, flirtatious young lady in a micro-mini skirt would be a Fun Fare, as would a humorous, eccentric old man intent upon locating $50,000 which he buried somewhere in Golden Gate Park back in 1929. His ploy was that he liked you and wanted you to become his partner.

The second category might be called the Grey People. These were the fares you forget were there. It was Sunday. It was eighty degrees in the shade and I was on my way to the Cliff House at the beach, hopefully to find a Fun Fare. The traffic was heavy and I was in a hurry. As I turned my head to execute an intricate lane change, I was startled to notice two middle-aged people perched in the rear of my cab. I flipped through the card file that passed for my memory, but I could not remember where I might have picked them up and for the life of me, I had no idea where they might be going. Finally, in a move of desperation, I made a cab-driver-like comment to draw them out, but they continued to stare straight ahead. They would not respond. In frustration I finally pulled over at an arbitrary point and in a very official voice said, "Well--here we are!" They dutifully paid and left.

The third category of fare was The Weirdo's. It was testimony to the difficulty of this particular game that SAGA had seen fit to spare no expense in importing prime weirdo's to complicate the driver's life on this particular game board. The Authority issued notice to the nation initially by naming this pseudo-city after an ancient Jesuit with a bird fetish and then further hyped the public with reference to a gate of solid gold spanning the Bay.

"But," you may ask, "how did one win at this game and what is it that one won that made it all so...so worthwhile?" The driver/player received points in the form of dollars and cents for transporting a real fare from one point on the game board to another arbitrary point on the game board. This player, if successful, after many arduous days, months and/or years of play, finally accumulated so many points that he got what was called a feeling of security. This feeling called security was based on an old law which stated, "Points equals time equals security equals game." Once a player/driver accumulated enough points to grant him the necessary time to feel secure, he realized the basic stupidity of what it was he was doing and so he quit. This brought up another old law "To quit is to win." A player might lose or fail, but he could not in all honesty quit or win until he realized what a game it was he was playing. Conversely, to lose is to retire. To receive notice that you were due to retire from any particular game was to receive official notice that time had been called on your game and you had lost.

This, at least in part, accounted for the impish grin on any successful cab driver's face, for by merely being eligible to be considered a possible player, one had to have had experience playing many other games and to have won (quit) those other games. All taxi drivers began as winners because they had successfully realized the essential gameish qualities of their past pursuits and had thus won by having quit those pursuits. This undoubtedly accounted for the high degree of independence and competition among taxi drivers. They intuitively realized that the game they had chosen to play was an advanced one.

I fondly recall my first day on The Street (taxi talk for the game board). It was raining slightly as I cruised down Columbus Avenue towards the Cannery. My radiator was leaking badly and the engine was threatening to boil over despite the fact that the outside temperature was only fifty degrees. Visibility was limited (my windshield had been custom-pitted with a ball-peen hammer and then coated with some sort of mysterious grease) and from the movement of my gas gauge, there appeared to be at least three major holes in my fuel tank. Although I had yet to pick up my first fare, I had already developed a nervous tic in my left eye, caused no doubt by the radio. Someone had cleverly turned up the volume and then disconnected the switch. This would have been acceptable except for the fact that my antenna had been removed at the previous red light by a gang of teenagers intent upon entering my vehicle. I was having trouble picking up a fare because the curb side of my cab was so badly dented that no one could open the door and the street side was emblazoned with certain unmentionable colloquial expressions. Suddenly, I saw my opportunity. An eighty year old man with dark glasses and a white cane had just left a bank and was edging his way across the street from left to right. I quickly stopped in the crosswalk and snapped open my one usable door. As the blind man stumbled into the rear seat I apologized for the delay and was about to inquire as to his destination when I noticed that the man's pearl handled revolver had dropped to the floor. As I reached to retrieve it he whacked the back of my hand with his cane and said in a rather loud voice--"Quick! To the airport!"

As I accelerated across the cable car track to get out of the way of the several converging police vehicles, my cab lurched slightly and with a barely perceptible snap the steering wheel went slack in my hands. Apparently the tie-rods had come undone. By this time I had reached forty miles per hour and was headed across an intersection toward a line of expensive new cars cleverly placed along the curb directly in my path. I spun the wheel to the left and it turned as loosely as a ship's wheel at anchor. It could have been serious for a player of lesser ability, but as it turned out I was able to complete a rather creditable day by using the badly adjusted foot brake for right turns and the loosely connected emergency brake for left turns.

After speaking with more experienced driver/players it was brought to my attention that I should feel proud. I had been issued a cab with a ten handicap. The Supreme Adult Gaming Authority had only recently introduced what it called the Mechanical Handicap Factor. The purpose of the handicap was to reduce any inequity in driver proficiency. Since it had been my first day on The Street and since I had managed to survive a ten handicap cab, I was respectfully granted the option of trying for a second day.

My second day happened to fall on a Sunday and as I quickly discovered, if you're in it for the money, weekend days are boredom and Sunday is apt to be terminal boredom. As you search constantly for that elusive Fun Fare to Carmel, the game becomes a total drag and you cannot help but feel rather foolish. It's Sunday, for God's sake--you could be home in bed reading the newspaper with somebody. Instead there I was at the ferry building trying in desperation to give away a free ride to Sausalito just to relieve the monotony.

Unfortunately, some SAGA executive had tipped the one hundred or so pseudo fares that I was a ten handicap player and I found myself received with all the warmth and enthusiasm of a heroin dealer at a private girls' grammar school. But then--quite unexpectedly--an elderly couple from an Australian cruise ship crept out of the dark cave that passes for Pier 35 and hailed me down and begged to be taken to the one place that I felt represented the San Francisco mystique. I whisked them across the bridge of gold and through the rainbow tunnel and around and down the magic mountain and into the dark forest that lies at its base--the one named after Mr. Muir--and together, the three of us spent the afternoon petting redwood trees and whispering. They would never forget San Francisco. They would never forget the time they paid to pet a tree. I will never forget them because it was Sunday and they laughed a lot.

But the day that stuck in his mind the most was my last day--the day I broke SAGA rule No. 9002.5

"It is strictly forbidden for any second level taxi driver operating within the confines of the game board known as San Francisco to bend the body of another vehicle, fare and/or spectator. Should a player happen to bend a body he will be penalized future points, since injured fares and/or spectators are entitled to massive amounts of bonus points in the form of insurance settlements."

I had just snagged a middle-aged male fare from the Fairmont Hotel. He was pretending to be a high school teacher from Des Moines, Iowa. He wanted to go to the Hyatt Regency Hotel and we had just crested the California Street hill when, as our wheels touched down, it happened. At the time I recalled feeling rather sorry for the poor naive innocent from the outback who, by having selected my cab, suddenly found himself involved. Quite unexpectedly our destinies became intertwined like the twin ribbons of a chromosome. I remembered thinking at the time that our stories had better be the same. We had just passed the Tonga Room and were approaching Grant Avenue when one of those speed-crazed bicycle messengers decided to take out his hostilities upon my vehicle. I saw him approaching from the right with his head tucked in some drug steeped reverie, totally unaware of the massive metal vehicles hurtling up and down California Street. Like a remotely controlled Lunar Rover with a camera malfunction, he aimlessly cruised into my right rear passenger door. As his two-wheeled vehicle slammed against the side of my cab, he executed a three-sixty over the roof and managed a creditable series of cartwheels down the street following the path of my warm exhaust like a heat seeking missile.

Maybe he wasn't paying proper attention. Maybe his front tire got caught in the cable car track. Maybe he was just taking a cheap shot at my cab in hopes of collecting massive amounts of bonus points.

I checked my passenger's expression in the rear-view mirror. He appeared to be in a state of terminal shock. A nervous sort, these novice fares--totally out of their depth in the big city. I had to admit this was a potentially serious situation. In the City of Saint Francis, the Gaming Authority does not take kindly to cab drivers running down helpless messengers playing the Bicycle Game. I glanced down at my speedometer and then back in my rear-view mirror. I was doing twenty-five miles an hour and the kid showed promise of passing me on the incline. I quickly tried to think of something to say that would somehow defuse this explosive situation but a noise from somewhere outside was making thinking impossible. It seems the kid's bicycle had become lodged in the door and was creating a hell of a racket scraping along the pavement. To make matters worse, my fare was violently gagging on some phrase he was trying to utter. Finally the noise became too much to bear and in desperation I pulled over to the side of the road as the kid slid past like a stone skipping across a still pond, his T-shirt screaming out the message, "KEEP ON TRUCKIN'."

"It's a shame," I said casually to my fare. "They turn these kids loose every morning with a walkie-talkie and a pocket full of No-Doze and expect them to make it through the day. Their game is so dreary they're forever smacking into legitimate players like myself just to relieve the monotony."

By this time the young bicycle messenger had scraped himself off the pavement and was slowly approaching my cab. He made a pitiful sight as he advanced, clutching his mangled parcel of messages to his chest like a humble apology. Like Bob Cratchet approaching Scrooge in the old Christmas Carol Game he approached my powerfully vibrating commercial vehicle and said, "Jesus! I'm sorry I didn't even see you! I certainly hope I didn't damage your cab?"

I smiled patiently and waited while he extricated the remains of his bicycle from the side of my taxi. As he turned to leave I gave him the friendly smile of a fellow participant in the World of Games and with a wave of my hand dismissed the whole affair. "Better take a break, kid, and EAT SOME FOOD!"

I apologized for the delay to my fare, and quickly explained that all bicycle messengers were, in reality, professionally trained Hollywood stunt men up in The City during the off season, collecting unemployment and moonlighting as bicycle messengers--just to keep in tip-top shape. This seemed to satisfy the rural innocent in my rear seat because he finally managed to make the connection between his brain and his vocal chords and utter the phrase he had been strangling on for the past three blocks: "M-m-my God, I feel so-s-so-involved!"

As I pulled back out into the traffic, I glanced into the rear-view mirror and reminded my passenger that the Taxi Game was indeed quite serious. In fact it was purposely designed in every respect to vaguely resemble Real Life.

SHOTS FROM THE HIP

He looked like a homeless guy after a cleanup night at the mission. He still looked bad, but not hopeless. I picked him up early in the evening on Christmas Eve. He was going home to his ex-wife. They got divorced a couple of years earlier, after he had lost his job and they had gone through their savings. She finally kicked him out.

He hit the streets--hard. He was forty-two at the time and very down on his luck. After a few months on The Streets, he was down to two sets of clothes and jobs were--impossible to find. He told me he hadn't been much of a drinker before he hit the street, but, once out there on the cement in the cold, you couldn't help but start drinking hard and heavy--just to stay numb and keep warm. I looked at him and shuttered. All that separated us was a single DWI, or a minor fender bender, and I'd be out there on the streets with him within two months. The illusory shield of security is so thin...

He told me he hadn't seen his ex-wife since their break-up, but he'd spoken to her on the phone and finally she had invited him over, it being Christmas Eve and all. He was sure that once they talked things over, they'd get back together. This was his positively, absolutely, utterly last chance--at least in this world. Yes, yes, he was sure everything would be fine, once they "talked things over." (I wasn't so sure.)

I pulled up in front of the apartment on lower Russian Hill, a nice looking place. As he started to pay me, I noticed a corner store still open down the block.

"Keep the money," I said, "it's Christmas Eve. Buy her some flowers".

"Yeah," he said, "Flowers, that's a good idea. Well, wish me luck".

As he struggled to crawl out of the cab, he seemed so hopeful--and yet, so hopeless. Sometimes life is hard and then it just gets even harder...

***

Fate intervenes only when man is not following his destiny. When a man is not fulfilling his destiny, fate will drag him along like a dog worrying over a bone in a stranger's yard.

***

I was driving. I was very feeling low. It had been a rough day. It had been a rough month. Hell, it had been a rough life! It was very late at night, and the streets were deserted. I hadn't had a fare since I couldn't remember when.

I glanced over while stopped at a light and saw someone stooped over, rutting through a trash can. There was a purple poster on a wall over the person's head advertising a dance. The color was striking because everything else was cement and faded wood, grayish in color. The person raised "it's" head from the trash container. It was an old woman; a bag lady, a street person. Around her neck she was wearing an old scarf the exact same shade of purple as the isolated purple poster on the building behind her, the color sort of jumped out because all was so grey, except for the two swatches of bright purple.

She looked at me with a sly quizzical grin and raised up completely. In her hand was a piece of trash, an old box or piece of wrapping paper and it, too, was the exact same shade of purple as her scarf and the poster. As she looked at me, her eyes momentarily "sparkled" and she raised her eyebrows in an exaggerated arch, as if to say, "Isn't life really something?" No words were said. I slowly drove off down the street as the light changed to green, but for some reason I no longer felt sad.

***

The spirit sports with time. The soul is the light that shines through and all of our earthly desire and ambition is nothing but shadow play on the cave wall. There is a secret here that we have all sworn not to reveal.

***

"He was living on attitude", the policeman said.

"He wasn't even looking", said the woman.

"From the absence of skid marks I'd say neither were you", said the policeman.

"His head was looking the other way", said the woman. "It was as if he didn't even care. I had the green light. I just assumed...?"

The policeman covered the body and pushed the onlookers away.

"You can live on attitude", he said to no one in particular, "but you won't live very well or very long..."

***

I had just dropped off in the Marina district. Filbert and Broderick. It was a very quiet neighborhood and it was very late at night. The fare had just walked into their building. I was writing down the particulars of this ride on the waybill when a bright light began to shine in my eyes. I looked up and saw a pair of headlights rushing at me at a very high rate of speed. I was sitting there with my seat belt on, and by the time I realized that I was about to die, it was too late to move. All I could do was sit there and watch a black Camero close with me on a collision course. As it got ever closer, time seemed to slow, and I could see that the person at the controls was slumped over the steering wheel. It was a very peculiar feeling, sitting strapped behind the steering wheel of a car parked at the curb, waiting to die. I remember at the time feeling rather silly, almost giddy. What was going to happen?

At the very last instant, the passenger in the oncoming vehicle reached across the driver and turned the steering wheel. My driver's side window was down and I had been sitting with my elbow resting on the open window frame. The approaching car swerved just enough so that it almost missed my cab. I lifted my arm and my outside rear-view mirror was surgically removed, as the black car passed in the night. As soon as it passed the brakes screeched and two women piled out. The woman who had been driving was leaning over throwing-up in the street and the one on the passenger side was quickly trying to switch positions with the driver. In a few seconds they had reversed positions and were gone. I remained seated behind the wheel of my cab. I hadn't moved except for my left elbow. I slowly lowered my arm back down on the window frame. The street was once again deserted and very quiet. Perhaps six seconds had elapsed. The oldies' station on the radio had been playing "A Whiter Shade of Pale" by Procol Harem.

***

Like Henry Miller in the late 30's I feel myself in need of my own Parkington Ridge. A quiet little acre in the woods by a large splash of water about two days' walk from the nearest town. Some place where I can live 'CHEAP!' and devote myself to creative projects and healthful pursuits.

***

Sometimes, late at night, I become griped with the fear that I am trapped in a golden trace. Hardly a beast of burden like my forefathers about to expire from overwork in the mill or the factory or the field but none the less trapped--behind the wheel, with my face pressed up against the glass seeing things I will never have, taking people to places I will never experience and eavesdropping on conversations that I have absolutely no part of.

I feel like I boarded a train in my youth in anticipation of an incredible adventure only to turn around a seemingly short while later to see the reflection of an old man in the window; the conductor, who looks vaguely familiar and in the end has been going no where, merely passing back and forth along the track among the travelers. Punching other people's adventure tickets.

***

He was a homeless man. He loved zippers on all of his pockets. He was full and round like an over-stuffed chair and yet his body was thin and pale. He carried books, journals, photographs, notes, magazines, pipes, cigarettes, mail. He lived and moved slowly like an old horseless carriage being pushed forward by gravity alone. He had one special newspaper dated JUNE l4, l970 which he held over his head on especially warm days or on rainy days. He has carried it every day for fifteen years now. It has somehow held together. It is his secret.

***

Paranoia is when you begin to suspect that your teeth are laying in wait for your tongue. The problem is not really serious though until you call the police in a muffled voice to report a crime in progress.

***

The emphasis here is on time, process, mastery of the leisure principle. Simple enjoyment combined with simple foods, clothes, exercises, pastimes, desires and goals. The middle way; the path that leads out into the world and not to the bank, the bar, the restaurant, the analyst's office or the divorce court. The desire is to become a master of cycles.

***

He climbed into the rear of my cab in a hurry. The guitar case he carried exhibited many stickers from concerts, tours and capitals of the world.

"You might have heard of me," he said. "I had a couple of hits on MTV a few years ago."

He told me his name and the name of his hits. No, I hadn't heard of him. He seemed surprisingly disappointed by the fact that I hadn't heard of him. On the way to the airport he asked if I wanted to do a line of cocaine. I said no. He went ahead and snorted up two hundred dollars worth of coke on the twenty minute drive to SFO.

As I watched him uncoil his leather clad legs and drag his guitar and shoulder bag from the rear seat I couldn't help but think that the guitar that this man pounds is his own body, and the mask he wears is of one who reaches neither orgasm or sainthood. He is merely caught in a high state of tension, which gives a false illusion of power. In his eyes I could observe the demonic little elevator of desire sliding up and down, never passing a floor without throwing open its doors to steal whatever might be left unattended.

***

Some people would have you believe that we are all stranded in the dark grasping for answers. Seems to me we are basking in the light of answer leisurely formulating questions.

***

A woman looks at a man as something to ride. The pony her father never gave her. Her means out of the yard, off the block, away from the home town, into of the Big City. The frustrations grow from there.

***

Sometimes I feel like a bullet shot from the barrel of a terrorist gun. The type of weapon is the culture I was born to. The rifling in the barrel that determined my spin and put the scratches and marks upon my psychic body was my family.

The inescapable realization is that no one comes out of the end of the barrel clean. The impact point that ultimately deforms the lead bullet will be the instant of my death. The detailed pattern the distortion will take will have been my life lived. The ultimate target will have been my dream of the light at the end of the barrel.

***

AND THE NIGHT CAME CRASHING IN

The driver received a call to a popular Marina bar a little after closing time. He was a new driver. It was a good neighborhood and the call was from the bar's direct line. He pulled up in front at 2:45 am and a young man in a sport coat and tie came out and got in the back seat. He wanted to go to Sausalito. He seemed a little quiet, a little preoccupied. As they started across the Golden Gate Bridge the driver thought it strange that there was no other traffic on the bridge. Then he saw the first red light in his rear view mirror. And then he saw red lights approaching him from the Sausalito side of the bridge. He slowed. He looked in his rear view mirror at the passenger but he couldn't see the man because he was seated directly behind him. It made him uneasy when people did that. He suspected that people did that just to piss off the driver. Now the red lights were obviously converging on him. Who the hell did he have in the back seat? He slowed to a stop and then he heard it; the distinct mechanical cycling of a semi-automatic pistol. Shit, he was scared.

The taxi was stopped now mid-span and there were police vehicles front and rear. He then heard the police PA-system.

"GET OUT OF THE CAR WITH YOUR HANDS UP!"

He began to turn towards his passenger when he heard the explosion. He had never been shot before. He looked down at his chest expecting to see lots of blood. There was no pain...and then his door flew open and there was a policeman with a shotgun pointed directly at him. The policeman was yelling at him but he couldn't hear. His ears were ringing from the explosion of the pistol. Suddenly the policeman grabbed him by the collar and pulled him out of the cab. As his feet hit the pavement he turned towards the backseat and there lay his passenger with a major part of his face missing. He had just committed suicide in the back seat of his cab. The policemen opened the rear door; their guns still pointed at the guy as if he might rise from the dead and take another shot. They couldn't seem to believe it either.

Turns out the guy just robbed the Marina district bar, raped the waitress and then was cool enough to call for a cab from their phone! He lived in Sausalito and thought he'd just go home and sleep it off, until he saw the red lights and the night came crashing in...

DEAD MAN ON THIRD STREET

It was late at night. The cab driver had just left off two seamen at pier #96 and was returning along 3rd Street when he saw what looked to be a dead body lying in the street at 3rd and Illinois. He called dispatch who called the police who told him to wait. He got out of the cab and approached the dead guy. It was a warm night but the body was--stiff. He was indeed dead. He looked like typical trouble. There wasn't any blood or obvious wounds. This was not a good place to be. It was very quiet out. He looked around and then returned to sit in the cab with his flashers on...and watch the body. He contemplated it from the car. Finally one car with two cops pulled up. They were gruff and treated the driver as if he were a suspect in a homicide! They rolled the dead guy over and looked through his pockets. While one cop talked to the cab driver, the other slowly pulled out a very large wad of cash from the dead guy's pocket. They looked at each other and then slowly...they looked at the taxi driver.

"O.K., you can beat it now," said one of the cops dismissively.

The driver returned their stare. "Divided by three, my friends, and my mouth is sealed," he said.

"What are you talking about?" said the fat one. "I said get out of here!"

"Look," said the driver, "I could have just pocketed the money. You would have never known. You simply give me my third and no one is the wiser. You try to keep it all and I'll report it--the full amount." (He was, of course, bluffing. He had absolutely no idea that the money was there. Nor did he have any idea how much cash the cop had counted.)

The two cops looked at one another other. It was a pregnant moment, many things could happen, finally one nodded. The other quickly counted off a small stack and handed it to the driver. "You didn't see nothing. You got it?"

"I was never even here."

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