NOT CLAM CHOWDER

Seeing a ghost falling from the ground was an up lifting experience; I was walking downtown when I stumble into his misfortune, I walked near him and tried to help him up but this was not a possibility; he did not even seem to bother himself with my assistance, instead against the ground he seemed like a partially squashed multi sermonic monk. I decided to keep on walking attempting to make sense of things. I was tired, I had worked late, having been given a very important project that would prove my worth to the company, diligently working away at it; I thought, just to keep my job, meant long hours of exhaustive work, creating spreadsheets that hurled numbers at the eyes faster than the eyes could keep track of them, I created slides of every imaginable perception, with humor to tease the humorous, with bar, line and pie graphs of arthritic repetition; all a truly uncharted sea of statistical data; simply designed to swamp any manager into analysis paralysis. When bad managers can’t figure your data out they commend you for your good work. Good managers don’t exist because they work for a living. So you can imagine how my being in such an analytical quandary might have made a ghost needing to drown in confusion. I aimed my walk homeward really requiring about as much guidance as a horse doing same.

Horses just take you home; I was using about as many mental resources as a horse, horse power is a good thing, horse mental power is disenchanting, horses that can count even more disenchanting, in my time on earth I have seen shows where they display horses doing low level math, this is of course wrong, horses can’t count; it has been observed by some that the horse trainer can count, this, I admit, might be possible. It is also true that if you wink at a horse it will cause him to tap the ground three or four times, such nervous behavior has also been observed in humans, only nervous humans can file a sexual harassment charge. TV shows that have horses talking sense are nonsense. A horse once tried to kill me by shopping off my head, I was just sitting on it, acting like a city cowboy trying to whip the lazy over ridden stable animal to run the Kentucky Derby, when the damn foundation of a horse decided to take off like a flash of lightning only in a straight line into all the tree branches in the region. Horses are aware that tree branches reach for horsemen, trees occasionally snatch one, “off with his head!” there are girls that like a little leather to the ass this horse was not like that; horsy was getting as close to every tree trunk as he could maintaining his huge neck and head slung low and forward, not for aerodynamic sensibility but rather so as to allow my back to be caressed by each and every tree branch, splattering visions of my face, I over reacted by hugging him tightly, getting a lot closer to his foaming being; and my neck embrace was such that he finally got sick of my licking his sweat, for he came to a most abrupt halt! I jumped off in a frightened hurry. After that horsy took me for a ride I have had the pleasure of eating horse meat, the joy of watching my little puppy dog eat horse meat, and more the exquisite pleasure of watching real cowboys storming riding horses with their testicles rope-tied-tight. After seeing a ghost it is better to head home like a horse.

Only before reaching the safety of my bed and its heavy comforter I found myself in front of a witch, a real witch at that. Throughout my life I had met witches and warlords but I had never actually been completely convinced of their wicked powers. The last time I met a worshiper of the satanic, I was at a coffee shop, minding my own business slowly harvesting my indifference to the world, but there was this man, he kept on looking my way, he was conversing with a few people around him, but he kept his intent to really communicate directed towards me trying to capture my glowing attention. There was nothing about him that intensified my desire to know him or to say “good morning nice day for coffee with a witch.” Please understand that you are listening to a man that speaks and has been possessed by spirits, and is currently involved in a critical discussion with an Omnibeing, a creature that technically does not exist; further I believe in the powers of the supernatural, and more I believe in the powers of the metaphysical, though they are really not powers, they are movements of expression; but I am just pointing this out so that you don’t think I was trying not to acknowledge the presence of this witch in my coffee shop; pointedly I don’t need any more spirit world forces in my life. Specially not satanic which are the provincial energies of the universe. Besides I just simply did not know him to be a witch, and further I had no need to know a witch, and though I believed in witches I had thought them all well dead, having the last four been killed, according to the papers, stabbed to death somewhere in South Africa. The problem for witches is that the people that believe in them, that is believe that they exist, these same people will indeed try to kill them. Vampires suffer the same misfortune, they shouldn’t desire to advertise their existence, “I gotta be me!” no you don’t. Better to remain in the dark of the forest, in the gutters or basements, or cities of the dead, but not upon our civilized humanity.

And yet, this guy finally decides to force an introduction, he wants to know what I am writing. I, having already many people that want me dead or out of the country for my big opinionated mouth, decide to tell him that I am not writing anything special, just scribbling, this may have been a more accurate description of what I was writing anyway. He advantages the vacuum of my actions to introduce himself as a practicing Witch and gives me his name, which he emphasizes is really his name, and I don’t recall it, but it went something like, “Blade of the Snake Tooth.” I did not bother to ask him if he had children nor their possible names, yet I must admit to seeing the creative possibilities as rather amusing. Certainly I was tired of a world that had all those Johns and Peters and Joes, and so few Cains. So Blade of the Snake Tooth had a creative jazz to it, even if the notes fizzled when you met the man. And Tooth of Snake decided to tell me that he was a notable in the circle of witches, something about completing the circle; I don’t get much of this stuff. Witchcraft is a local energy I am into the cosmic in a big way, hard not to be into the cosmic in a big way, but witchcraft is for farmers, for peasants, for those that are still trying to toy with the energies that surround and fuse the universal locality. In their more egregious phantasmagoria witches are mad vegetarians that graduate to become extreme environmentalists. Snake Tooth then makes the assumption that I don’t believe in witches, “You don’t believe!” Ouch, hurt my feeling Mr. Witch. I think more his feelings were hurting because his power rested on my belief, much of the problem for witches today is that so many people do not believe in them, without belief anything is powerless. I believed in spirits so they frequented my person, I did not believe in witches so they had to go out of their way to introduce themselves to me. “Hello I am a witch and my name is Blade of the Snake Tooth.” Nice to meet you Tooth Snake and I am Hamlet maybe you and I can overdose on Ophelia together. I apologize to all the witches in advanced for my lack of belief, I see all those curses a brewing now, horror I truly hate frog legs. I might still warn all the witches out there that I already have a huge curse that was placed on me by some spirit in Colombia when I was but a mere child. The curse has caused me much harm, agony and incessant nightmares and prevents me from returning to my homeland. This curse will be exorcised by me, in a few months, I will return to Bogota to confront it with all the massive movements that I am appropriating from Omnibeing. So I responded to toothless cavity prone man, “It is not that I don’t believe in you witches it is just that I am not a witch myself and whenever I don’t believe I am the thing itself then I don’t believe in the thing itself.” Tooth Snake shrugged his shoulders, hardly becoming of a witch, “What do you mean by that?” I responded in a more down to earth manner, this is the problem with witches they understand simple earthly things, all their ingredients can be found on the earth, there are no exotic minerals or atomic subparticles, they are naturalists, which is not surprising since they are taking advantage of local natural energies, rats, mushrooms, ravens, sticks from naked trees, a cauldron; all reminds me much of Chinese cooking only the Chinese don’t believe that they are brewing a magic formulae, so they don’t get the magic out of it. Not to say that the Chinese are not a magical people, Chinese are massive magical dragons, but that is talking about too many things at once, so back to Tooth Snake. All that magical power and Tooth still had fillings? Strange. Come to think of it all the witches I have ever met had bad teeth, local energies are bad for your hygiene. Satan is not into sterile cleanliness, Witches are dirty by nature, I just happen to have stumbled into Mr. Witch, which just happen to be very well groomed though in possession of numerous filled cavities. So to explicate I went into metaphors, “What I mean to say is that I follow a sort of businessmen attitude to what I believe in and practice.” Obviously this guy was not a businessman so I continued with my explanation, “In the business world they have this saying, “If you can not see yourself at the top then you are in the wrong organization.” And so you see Mr. Snake, when I think of witchcraft I don’t see myself at the top; Satan would not take kindly to me taking over, and I don’t want to be a middle manager; it is precisely why I am not a Christian I just don’t see myself at the top, and so I don’t believe in being second at anything or to anyone. I shall keep on searching for a belief that will have me as its Omnibeing leader.” Mr. Witch did not find the meaningfulness of my statement and retorted instead, “You don’t comprehend the power of witchcraft, we have the capacity to reach every aspect of existence, we harvest the natural power of nature, everything has this power, and it is not about being evil with this power, it is about making one’s life more in harmony with the power of nature so as to use that power to make our desires, through the awareness of the essence of our being. ” Making desires? Was it not bad enough that we were already born with plenty of unsatisfied desires? This witches were going around manufacturing more desire! I am probably not doing Witch Tooth much justice, but that was the just of what he said, further he went on to say, “I teach witchcraft you should come to one of my classes at The University, then you will understand what we are really about.” Religion became atheist because it had no choice but to do so, so as to survive in the rational world, now too witchcraft was trying to rationalize its own existence. Political correctness so as to guarantee believed required that all things be associated with knowledge and goodness. Knowledgeable and wholesome organic witches were the in.

Mr. Tooth started talking intellectual witchcraft jive, and I went out of my way to kindly explain to him that “…if witchcraft can be taught I don’t want to learn it. There is nothing more pedantic than knowledge, anything that can be taught is not worth learning.” Mr. Witch insisted that I at least give it a chance, at which point I noted that my lack of belief was merely based on how powerless witchcraft was over other forces and not based on its reality of existence. I then ended our conversation by saying that I had to leave for an appointment which I did not have but had risen from the necessary moment. He forced his name and address upon me, accentuating all his certified credentials to teach what he preached. Then he shook my hand goodbye, in a very gentle manner, lingering upon the detachment while he transferred some weak negative energy, I walked away feeling the stuff habituating my right palm, it is like a mold, or coral growth that is of course invisible and can not be physically discerned only felt, sort of like a glorified version of athletes foot, only you catch it from a witch; no doctor can cure it and its inoffensive enough that you can host it till you die and it doesn’t change your life. Witches like to transfer this sort of trinket natural energy so that they can go where ever you go, only it is to weak to really inform them of anything, it is a very weak force but they think that because you carry it around for them that they have changed a part of the surrounding environment to their flavor, while the only thing that they have accomplished is to create an obnoxious feeling that for the most part can be tuned out easily enough, so as not to warrant any defensive reaction. Anyway soon after meeting Mr. Tooth Snake, my very dear friend Jill decided to tell me that she too was a Witch and hey I could be a witch too, and she invited me to one of their meetings to which I replied, “No I don’t want to go because I am afraid that they will make me their leader.”

But as if non-belief was not cause enough for me to be left alone I stumbled into this other witch on the way home. Over due for some rest I tried to keep on walking but the damn witch, holding a red cup of soup in her hand, moved into my walking path. I said “Nice nose lady please move out of my way.” To which she replied with intense gray tiny eyes bulging from her wrinkled flesh. “You know that I can not go away, I will stand in your path until you drink this cup of nice soup that I have concocted for you.” This witch had not learnt political correctness, concocted was such an evil term, I awakened more alertness fast. Irritated I abruptly pushed her to the ground and made a fast walk not expecting the old witch to get up any time near soon. But as I was preparing to turn left at the end of the block, witch sprang up from out of nowhere, I held back, she sprung up, I am telling you this as scary truth, sprung up out of nowhere she, and right planted her ugly face near my mind so that I could breath and taste her facial hairs. “Listen to me! you must drink this soup and you must drink it now before it gets too cold!!!” Such concern, the night was not that cold, I did not like soup, even when I worked at the Chinese restaurant, being around all those versions of the same noodle soup, I was not inspired to drink any soup. So I replied.. “Is it Clam Chowder because I really like Clam Chowder?” The nasty bitch could not lie, it is more a rumor that witches are liars, they are instead deceivers, when asked a question directly they have to tell the truth, if they don’t their power is greatly diminished because all power rests on belief and lying implies doubt, lack of faith, it translates to retreating… unlike Tooth Snake witch here was no idiot and responded “You fucker you know damn well this is not Clam Chowder, we witches don’t cook creamy soups, we don’t like creams period, it’s the fucking French that creamy shit on everything!” Ouch! I wanted to take offence on behalf of the French people but I could not think of one good reason why, they do so well by themselves. Besides I truly appreciated her honesty and more I was appreciating her ability to hold on to a hot cup of soup. I shoved her firmly into the ground. She stayed there for three seconds max and then sprung up, on her feet betraying feline gymnastic skills. I complimented her, “Very, very good, must a taken a lot of practice to learn how to hold on to that cup of soup.” And then I burst into hysteric laughter. “Listen to me the Witch you met at the coffee shop placed stolen energies in the palm of your hand for safe keeping, this soup will release them back to their appropriate sorcerers; you must drink this for them, their energies do not give you any power, they are useless with you, Tooth of Snake knew that in your palm they could be hidden indefinitely, he is afraid of the others, he steals their magic energies and hides them through scattering, thus he is able to exceed their powers. Please, I know you don’t seriously believe in our ways, this magic energy is then of no use to you; I implore with all supplications drink this cup of soup.” She was certainly a credible witch, besides I wanted to cure the athletes foot itch that the infernal energies produced upon my palm. I helped her dark highness by reaching for her cupped hands, we jointly held the soup, I drank the bloody lentil flavored soup. She gave me a faint smile, witches don’t smile, they got nothing to smile about, they either laugh hysterically or they are sinisterly serious, she fainted a smile my way.

My right hand begun to glow red, fantastically red, a green moss started to grow from it, green moss, growing like an inflatable glove, the effect grew nicely. Green glows and yellow circles begun to puff curls around my hand, while I held the soup lady with my left hand, as my other hand continued to glow and engulf a huge area around me, I did not feel pain, rather felt a joy, a euphoric lightness overcame my mind, whimsical metaphors were rushing through my inflamed heart, then a slow spiraling sound proposed to hum, then ring, the ringing grew until suddenly there came a giant POP! And all the energies hurriedly dashed into the night, disappearing comet trails everywhere; and the itch did cease so much it stopped. I kissed the pretty witch, planted one big giant kiss upon her thin lips, and she smacked me graciously but hard for it. And I went home to sleep.