Holy War

The Bodhisattva isn’t used to hate.

‘Hate’ is an emotion he wants to believe he’s above.  ‘Hate’ is the emotion of the small-minded, the bigoted, the racist, the ethnocentric, the nationalist.  So often he’s dealt with that word, with its implications and its residual trauma and the way it can poison whole families, whole communities.  So he tries to be zen, centered.  Play devil’s advocate.  See the perspective and the motivation, even if he didn't agree with it.  It’s what made him so magnetizing to the crowds he used to preach towards.

But hate is what he feels.

And he hates that, ironically enough.

It’s not that he lost his big chance, though he was sorely disappointed.  But the hows, and the to who–those fill him with something he can only describe as a Paxton Ray-level feeling behind the eyes.

To watch people who surely don’t deserve good things reap good things.

It’s the way of things, the standard speed of a sick world, but it shouldn’t be.  And that ‘shouldn’t be’ is morphing within him, he can tell.  Shifting from a sense of inequality to be righted and injustice to be reversed and hope for the ascension of humanity into a rage, into fire, into hate.

Not that his surroundings help much.

As thankful as he is to be back in the States, back at the helm of his camper van, the setting feels a bit too on the nose.  If the sense of spiritual hope at the injustices of the world turning into hatred were given form as a city, it would be San Francisco.  This was the epicenter, the patient zero, the touchdown of a bomb of consciousness expansion that reverberated across the entire globe–and in a time before social media, at that.  The things achieved in the bay began chain reactions across the planet so powerful in their threat to the status quo that all new laws were erected, all new powers given to police, all new consolidations made just to keep it from gaining more momentum.  That’s the sort of mass elevation that Sage has dreamt about since his childhood, listening to his dad tell him legends of Haight Ashbury and the Dead and The Merry Pranksters.

All of that has been raped from the land, all meaning wrung dry, all charm replaced by corporate interests and a growing divide between the haves and the have nots.

It almost feels like a sick joke that this happened to San Francisco, but all it makes Sage think about is how he wasn't strong enough to defeat what he saw as the avatar of a specific brand of competitor, one that’s all too common still.  People like to write on blogs how the business has evolved, but here people like Diamonds stand, successful and getting fat off of their paydays, wearing championship belts and being walking examples of rot that just can’t seem to be stamped out.

Navigating the streets, it’s so overt it borders on comical.  Gleaming towers, doors guarded by private security, all armed to the gills, while the homeless literally sleep 20 feet away.  Unable to afford to live in the city that’s been their family home for generations because the technology sector managerial class showed up and drove the rents up, gutted all that was good in exchange for space for spin classes and gastropubs.  Boosters sell anything they can get their hands on, from food and drinks to power tools to luxury clothes.

His camper is full of things he figures they all need.  New shoes, food, clothing, medicine.  And failing that, he’s got a pocket absolutely obese with his paydays from the European tour.  Cliff is fond of reminding him that there are material needs and that the best way to stick it to a system that demands the stripping off all that is good from humanity is to help that same humanity thrive.  “Jam it down their fuckin’ throats until the systems choke to death on their own greed”.  What once was just charming militarism in his partner has begun to make more sense to him.  He sees it all, what greed and commerce have done, how they’ve been shambling vampires and done their damndest to stamp out that spirit that led to such revolutions.  In their place they’ve erected shining towers from roots of squalor, and in their hubris, they think that they’re safe.  That the apparatus of the state will keep them alive once the numbers are hungry and desperate enough to truly start counting how many more of them there are than bullets in the whole bay.  And underneath it all, beneath the turmoil and the rot, Sage can sense that old hippie spirit slumbering.

Just nowadays he’s not sure what it will take to wake it up.

But he’s sure now that hoping and praying and meditating a positive vibrational frequency isn’t the answer.  That makes him sad as hell to consider, but with the evidence of it so thrown in his face in his career and his surroundings, he can only come to one conclusion.

Holy war.

—

“I seen you on the tv, I think.”

This causes Sage to twist a little and find out who said it.  He’s been posted up in The Tenderloin, not too far from Little Saigon, for the last four hours, taking on all comers.  Some are clearly Fent zombies, others are mentally unstable, some homeless, some just poor.  The Bodhisattva has given everything he has–dry goods, prepared meals, water bottles, psilocybin, booze, clothes, cash.  Whatever he’s gathered for them, they can have.  And frankly, he’s starting to get tapped, which is useful, as the crowd dispersed a while back.

But that statement throws him.  Cause for all the time he’s been out here, and all the time he’s been in PRIME, he hardly gets recognized.  Part of that has to be that he, stunning looks aside, could pass for any other hippie burnout on the road, especially here.  Here even his lengthy head of white boy dreads don’t make him feel that distinct.

The voice is coming from an individual who can’t be any older than 30, scrawny and sinewy in a way that speaks to hard living, both in work and in lifestyle.  His arms are covered in tattoos ranging from professional to prison, and despite the heat and the dinginess of his clothing, his eyes remain insightful.  Bright.  He walks over to Sage, his movement fluid in a way that indicates that he may not be all the way sober.  Pontiff nods to him, smiling.

“Yeah dude, you probably have.”

“Ha!  Knew it.  You’re that hippy that gets all bloody in the ring, right?  Sage Paxton?”  At this, The Bodhisattva chuckles to himself.

“Sage Pontiff.  Paxton’s my friend.  Tall, loyal, meaner than a bayou gator?”

“Aw, shit, that’s right.  Gotta excuse me man, ain’t had my uh…mornin’ coffee, y’know?”  The person extends their hand, smiling.  “Cross, man.  Nice to meetcha.  Cool if I pop a squat?”  Sage nods, indicating a paint bucket that’s been turned over, and the individual has a seat on it, firing up a battered heater.  “Why the hell you down here tho?”

“Had some free time, found myself…upset, I guess, at the state of things around here.  All these fatcats grinding down good people–fuck, they don’t even need to be good people, right?  They’re people, regardless.  They deserve warmth and comfort and they sure as hell don't deserve that warmth and comfort being taken away by corporate greed.”

“Shit, preachin’ to the choir on that’n.  Course, I’m pretty damn sure you ain't got the kind of money’s gonna fix alla San Fran, I bet you barely made a dent in this neighborhood.”

“You’re right.  But I could also do nothing–but doing nothing doesn’t sit right with me.”

“Shit, I’m glad it don’t.”

“You been living out here long?”  Pontiff punctuates the question by fishing a fresh water out from one of his coolers, handing it over to the man.

“Aw man, thanks.  Uhh…I been probably out in the Tendie for like ten years now?  I used to live in South Market, what they call SoMa now that they came out and gentrified the place.  Couldn't make rent, had too much debt on top of me, car got repo’d, ended up out here.”  He takes a big gulp from the water, shrugging.  “Now I boost what I can, find places to stay.  Course we’re running into less and less of those as time goes on.”  Cross takes another hit from his cigarette, his eyes scanning the horizon.  “Guess that’s the way it’s always been, though.”

“I’ve been hearing that so much more, as of late.”

“Whatsat?”

“‘That’s the way it is’, or ‘that’s the way it’s always been.’  Seems any time I dig deep on injustice, it always ends up at the same place.  That injustice is just the currency of the world and that I’m a fool for believing anything else might be possible.  I’ve had a lifetime of people looking at me like I’m a naive child because I was dumb enough to believe that a better world is possible.”  Cross nods emphatically at this, taking another drag off his smoke.

“I mean, can ya blame ‘em?”

“I shouldn’t?”

“Nah man, I mean…look around you.  You tell people it’s possible, they don’t see no evidence of that fact, y’know?  If it was possible, then all that kumbaya love your brother shit from the 60’s woulda held.  All that’s ever a sure thing is they’ll find new ways to fuck you soon as you figure out how to navigate around the old ones.  That ain’t even just San Fran or even the uh…habitationally challenged, we’ll say.  That’s business, life, neighborhoods, friendships.  Someone gotta fuck someone.”  Pontiff scoffs, pulling his eternally replenishing raw cone from within his dreadlock dimensional pocket and popping it into his lips.  Cross hands him his lighter, which Sage uses with a grateful nod.

“I reject it.”  He takes a big hit and offers it to Cross, who gratefully chiefs down a massive lungful before handing it back.  His next words are choked as he holds the sacrament in his lungs.

“What’s that even look like?”  That gives the Bodhisattva pause.  He looks to Cross, then to the ground.

“Sometimes I have this dream, man.  The gleaming towers of the elite are wreathed in…fog, or smoke, or clouds, something.  Like they’re laughing and eating good and everything is white linen and gold fixtures and sterling silver.  They don’t have a care in the world, right?  Because they get to see the sunshine and the blue sky, and the ground where all these undesirables are is covered by that mist.  Something.  Something where they don't have to see the ground level where all the people they’ve been exploiting live like a breathing organism, finally unified as one.  And one by one those towers fuckin’ crumble, because their foundations have been hacked to nothing, and the oligarchs are chased through the streets and they know fear, real fear, because they’re meeting a problem they can’t buy.  They’re finally feeling the real stakes that all of us feel.  And what fucks me up when I wake up is that I’m less happy about all people unifying than I am about making those who live off of unjust fear for their lives.”

This monologue frankly casts a silence on the duo.  Cross gratefully takes the passed joint, thinking these words over. Pontiff idly picks at one of the numerous scabs on his knuckles, considering what all of that implies.  While he wouldn’t normally bare so much to a practical stranger, he feels a sense of ease.  Or a sense of not caring if he alienates someone.  Finally, with a slight cough, the other man speaks up.

“Sounds like you wanna hang em off the edge of their high rises, wrestler man.”

“Some days I do, Cross.”

“Today one of them days?”

“It started like one.  But this talk has done some good.  Besides.”  He takes one last hit and hands it over to Cross, waving his hands to announce that he’s done.  “I’ve got a match to prepare for.” “Yeah?  Where’s your dreams of topplin’ oligarchs square with that?”  Sage stands, chuckling and shaking his head.

“I’m still figuring that part out.  But if I can do some good, then I’m gonna do it.”  He reaches into his pocket and fishes out the last of the cash he brought.  It’s not counted out, but it’s a folded wad of money at least half an inch thick.  He holds it out to Cross, who looks at him confused.

“What’s this for?”

“For whatever, dude.  Use it to get yourself a place to stay, use it to help out anyone you’re close with, use it to get high.  I’m not gonna means test helping someone out.”  Cross stands, shaking his hand and smiling a grin that’s missing one tooth.  Without even asking, he helps Sage load the coolers and paint buckets into the Biodiesel camper, until all that’s left is to say their goodbyes.  But Pontiff isn’t turning this into a teary farewell, and Cross has money burning a hole in his pocket.  The other man begins to walk off with a wave, before turning around.

“Ay, Sage!”

“Yeah man?”

“Good luck makin’ them feel that fear, man.”

—

You ever think about knowledge?  I dunno if there’s anything better, and I really, genuinely mean that.  Like, you can feed a person, but to teach that person?  That has the power to transform everything.  How they look at the world, how they interact with humans and nature.  It can be deep as bones and as lofty as the spirit.  I’ve been thinking about knowledge, about education.  Because you’re a bit of a vessel, right?  Empty.  Ready to learn, ready to absorb.  And this is a business full of people who will want to steer you in a negative direction, bro.  Carnies and addicts and misanthropes and sex pests who want this to be an industry of avarice and backstabbing and people getting taken advantage of.  In a lot of ways, it isn't their fault.  It’s how things were when they came up.  They were hurt so they hurt you, they were picked on so they pick on you, and they give it this window dressing and call it “paying dues”.  When all that is is a flimsy pretense for continued, unchecked abuse.  I don’t have the stomach for it.  I don’t want you to have the stomach for it.  I seek evolution.  It’s clear to me that those who are so heavily invested in ‘business as usual’ have no skin in the game to accept change.  So they have to be left to rot and die off in their own time.  But it’s not that simple, it’s never that simple.  Because if they get a chance to get their hands on someone like you and beat you and belittle you and haze you and tell you “them’s just the breaks, kid”--then their sickness lives on.  I won’t stand for it.  I can’t, in many ways.  People like them are no longer curious, they carry no wonderment in their soulbeings.  I can think of sad things, but few sadder than that, then a soul that has calcified and encrusted and that goes about its days not seeing the potential and color and cosmic dance of life.  Is that the life you want?  Do you want to be so worn down that you feel like an old man before you’re actually an old man?  You can do that.  I’m not telling you you can't.  Look around us, that’s a way of guaranteed if not success, at least stability.  Mirthless beings like that cling to these companies like barnacles and earn a handsome living for doing so. But there is another way, man.  There’s a path of light.  Where what we do in that ring, the pure violence of it, can touch places that are sacred.  Or shit, it can also just be its own thing.  Make it yours, not theirs.  Make it what makes you happy, don’t just do things like they’ve been done out of some misplaced sense of tradition.  We will meet in the ring.  I’ll show you my way.  We’ll try to hurt each other really badly.  Who you’re going to decide to be is on you.  But I hope you decide to be your own person.  Not my type of person, not who they want you to be.  Define this how you want to define it.  The rest will fall into place in a flurry of sweat and blood and contused meat.  Namaste.