REVIEW DISCOURSE & DISCUSSION, PASS EACH TRIAL FOR FURTHER ACCESS. WHEN VIDEO IS COMPLETE, SCROLL TO BOTTOM & CLICK TO ACCESS NEXT TRIAL.
“It’s good to find yourself questioning everything in life. Unless you remember creating & approving it as truth, it’s likely a thought, belief, dogma, or system from another sentient will. ”
“There are riddles waiting for you here... codes that lead you to much larger realizations. If you didn’t tune into them, come back later, or listen to the discussions to reveal the deeper meaning.”
jacks metaphysical tavern
“Get yer self up!”
“Wake up! Snap out of it.” A hand slapped my face.
A female voice rang, “Dump a fucking beer on that moron!”
I peeled my face from the table, and forced my elbows to push my body up. It felt as if the room was moving.
“That was quite a story you just told.” Jack smiled.
I bumbled, “Uh… what am I doing here?”
Jack looked through me, asking, “Want another beer partner?”
Alice piped up. “Shit for brains, you passed out in the toilet and whacked your head good. You went down—still pissing!” Then, appearing to steady herself, she explained, “We sat you in the booth, like a bum, and you were mumbling all sorts of crap.”
I remembered leaving my trailer. Soon there was a lightning strike, and… and… I made my way to the Tavern just as the rain let loose. Then, I began to wonder why Jack’s hat had a CAT patch on it (it used to say John Deere), and where the heck Gustavo came from. I could've sworn that Chumba had been sitting in the same seat when I went into the restroom.
Oddly, I was distracted, having heard clicking and scratching. I looked up into the rafters and saw nothing there.
Jack said, “We were all telling stories, having fun. But you, you were glassy eyed, blabbering about taking o’er the world or sumptin’ like dat.”
Jacks eyes crossed as he tore into his monologue, “Embrasse moi tchew. Yer backwards perspective is keeping you from seeing yer hanging upside down in the parachute drop ride, where your ‘up’ has become ‘down’.And ya still believe that when you look into the East, West, North, and South of Texas, those words will be written in the sky.”One eye squinted, he reflected, “Ça c’est bon. You been a skeeter pretending it’s da state bird.”
Jack had been hijacked!
I scratched my head and attempted to mock him, asking, “So, if I’m swept from the plains and floating over six submerged continents, can I rename the land when the flood subsides?” I waited for an answer as my fingers slid across the table’s laminate. Marlboro smoke assured me I wasn’t dreaming. Still, the walls of the bar seemed to move side to side.
“You can, but only if yer first answer why all the continents start with an A and end with an A,”Jack answered.
The jukebox blared countrified hip-hop, which made it easy not to think about answering. My body pulsed. Meanwhile, lyrics filled the background… 'wide is the circle, opposite sides, almost confident, telling no lies, an endless horsetrack, bet some dough, chicken in the bread pan, do si do.'
Jack’s weak eye wandered as he spoke between swigs. “So Xavier, tchew distinctions are as permanent as yer hair.” Jack put his hand up to his mouth and mixed the word ‘cooyon’ into a fake cough.
A shovelful of dirt landed on my attention. My ego was furious.
Then he jumped from his barstool like a cockroach escaping a hot griddle and launched into what he thought a Shakespearian soliloquy,“You’re standing on your trailer scooping up wind in a bag, and sayin’ the wind is still in der.”
Wanger hawked, “Der’s nuf popcorn for a zillion fairgoers.111,111,111 kernels of popcorn multiplied by itself is a shit load of Popcorn!”
Gustavo hailed like a mariachi, “Oye! Schoolmarms standin’ on their RV’s in high heels, lowering buckets into the torrent, reeling ‘em up and calling their catch ‘the flood’".
Then with a slur, Jack pointed towards his privates and pontificated, “Get yer hot dogs here!” He turned, placed his fingers before his mouth as if holding a rhinestone of wisdom, and derided, “The highfalutin peering through dare looking glass at da sun, and writing about dare newly formed blind spots.” Hooting and hollering, he proclaimed, “Tickets! Get yer tickets. Laissez les bon temps rouler!”
The small but captive crowd roared, “Bravo!”
Wanger leaned over and caught his balance on the bar stool, and with eyes bulging, taunted, “Hey Xavier, didn’t ya know just because a chicken has wings, doesn’t mean it can fly?”
Disbelief brimming, I spilled out, “Wanger, you’re not who you say.”
“Not who I say?” Wanger flared. “Ya gotta be dumber than a dawg not to know we remember past in the present, and harebrained not to get it that longing in the now damn sure creates the future. Maybe it’s addiction to the ‘tunnel of love’ preventing you from realizing that everything done got differing amounts of knowing.”
“If you’ve something to say, say it in English!” I barked.
At that moment, a truck pulled into the lot. Diffused by a torrential downpour, its headlights cruelly illuminated his face. He was wrinkled like a knapsack and didn’t look at all like the Wanger I knew.
“Perk your ears up Xavier, it’s been sixty-seven years since that last whisky, and boy how time flew. It done seem like a moment between the closing of that door and the downpour. Only in my old age did I remember why I came. I been sittin’ on my spurs, creating carnival filth. Damn I wish it were easier to pull out of the tunnel of love… once I entered, dizzy as my head did spin.”
Wanger stared.
Perplexed, I grumbled, “Why are you talking like you’re dead? You do look like a piece of beef jerky though.”
Wanger withdrew into the darkness. The booth creaked as he shifted. His cracked and reticulated lips moved, muttering, “Reptile in your head, scales of self-deception done left reality dead. Listen to the old horntoad say, ‘The night is longer than the years have past, you’re already old and over... living a thousand years we’ll say are nothing but a year. A year… a day. And when you finally sit up, you’re in a creaky old wood chair.’”
“Is Xavier still dreaming, passed out, or flashing between soul dimensions?”
Nine '11's x itself is 12345678987654321. A 'co-incident-al' occurrence of course!
Discussion of concepts and possibilities
“There are esoteric riddles waiting for you... codes that lead you to much larger realizations. If you didn’t tune into them, come back later, or listen to the discussions to reveal the deeper meaning.”