Prologue: Goal Achievement in the Ooze
TJA
I thought I had dozed off, but suddenly I heard my name called and it was my turn. The group is a little fuzzy, so I rub my eyes while I talk.
"Hi, my name is Tom T Gradeczek, and I'm a Thrill Junkie."
(chorus) "HI TOM!"
"It's been 11 months since I was last wired on thrills. I have a good life now. I found someone who can accept me for who I am. I want to do good things on my job, and settle down. I'm learning to relax. The world is a beautiful place, and I'm trying to enjoy it for what it is, without going for hyper-thrills."
(chorus) "Way to go Tom". The cheering, clapping and whistling starts and begins rolling over me in waves. I can feel it now, the adrenaline surge. I begin to rock back and forth on the balls and heels of my feet. The cheers get louder and my senses grow sharper. I can smell the sweat and feel the heat coming off the crowd. As I snap my eyes open wide, everything goes pitch black.
I am sweating, awake ... my heart is thudding, pounding. My feet are poised a foot above the bed, the way they are when I kip out into a standing position, ready to bolt from the room. I was reliving the roar of the crowd when I helped BB King put on a particularly good concert. He called me out on stage to take two bows. The crowd was a drugged-up and wowed post-concert. BB had packed the Capital Theater that cold, rainy night. Outside soldiers were poised on every street corner, ready to kill. Trying to stop a revolution.
The sweat was rolling off me in rivulets. But I enjoyed good hormone-filled sweat. It made me feel like life had suddenly been magnified, and primeval fires and heat surrounded me. It was the feeling hunters felt just before the kill and after the kill by the fire. I WAS on fire ... but in a good Way. It was a fiery feeling I had trouble explaining to women because the only way to describe it was to compare it to wild sex using male hormone-isms as language.
I guess now I'm just a geek, because the new millennium is a geek's world. I live in cyber space. I turn circuits on and off to send information to millions of people on the Web.
In a previous reality "Sang froid" became part of me. It started at the Air Force Academy. Then I traveled the world, trying to find what it was I didn't know. I learned volumes in English and French, and after a few years I found out ... there is no secret to life. There's just life.
The world around Los Angeles is populated by users. At least it's obvious to me. Whether it's the music business or the movie business or any of the dozens of other user businesses, you'll find many, many of them in LA. I've given up trying to find much that's real in LA. It's a world of illusions, so when people try to figure me out, I give them an image of myself to deal with as best they can.
My job is to create a virtual world on the Net for people who need cars repaired ... NOW. My free time I spend with my cohorts, looking out for the hazards in life. Hopefully we find pearls when we lose out and go pearl diving. Sure I'm misunderstood. Every real person is misunderstood, because they never reveal all of themselves. They don't even know all about themselves, so how could they tell someone else. It's only the manufactured people who can be completely understood, then used, then used up and often thrown away.
I want to be happy. Most people do. I am preparing for a happy future. Maybe if I live long enough, happiness will find me. Maybe it will send me a resume, "You want real happiness, well I'm IT." I've even known a few people who were really happy living within their own peculiar reality. So maybe I have a chance. Until then I live as "Mr. Connect-the-Dots". I put things together. It helps me see into the future.
I've raced motorcycles. I've raced death working undercover with gun runners. For a few years I toured with rock and rollers. Life was usually good then and I felt like I was great. Then I moved to LA, to the heart of the image business. Now I make my clients seem "Great" when people see them on the Web. In the 70s I saw the computer juggernaut coming towards today's reality, so I jumped on for the ride.
Somehow I stayed young, the way I am in my daydreams. I'm sitting by a little pond, fishing and enjoying the view, watching the ants working diligently, always diligently. Now, my perch is Simi Valley, where there is still some real southern California air minus most of the pollution. From there I watch the LA dead-soul-zone ooze by. Once in a while a beautiful bubbly life, with myriads of colors, rises to the surface and floats away from the slime. But usually the ooze digests every body that swirls around in it.
One thing I've learned, is to give it all I've got when I go for my goals. I don't look back, because that just slows me down. I don't get hypnotized by the illusions of beauty, or glamor, or happiness Los Angeles manufactures. All those illusions are designed to suck you in. Who knows if there will be anything left of the "real you" after the ooze takes its toll?
Perhaps this view makes me remain distant and cold, but it is my armor against all the really evil people and things that seem to get a free pass in LA. I can't fix everything that's unfair or unjust. I can just try to make a deal with this demon world, to get out of my way. I respect everyone. I believe in fairness above all else. That's about the best I can do. I keep my eyes open, and don't assume anything stays the way it was supposed to be in the past. That past was all an illusion anyway. It's the only advice I can offer.
With life we can get Mr. Rogers offering everyone "a beautiful day in the neighborhood", or gangs killing people in the hood every day. So "Let's Make A Deal". I'll try not to get myself killed. Not getting killed, so I can finally enjoy real life ... that's the ultimate thrill.
Copyright 2005. Copies of this book are available from Book Distributors Inc. c/o Davidson, Deckert and Glassman, 330 West 47th Street, Suite 250, Kansas City, Missouri, 64112, 816-221-2700