The Expat (Runaways, Escapees and Refugees)

So, now I ride inside a broad car, accompanied by an ex-history-teacher on the run. As a start, we have been talking about experimental music, free-jazz, Stockhausen, John Zorn etc. And then, at some point, he goes on telling me some details about his ex-wife etc and then, he begins a confusing speech about fashion that goes like this: "When the future is threatening and uncertain... there is the retraction... the retraction of the present that is constantly being protected, arranged and recycled in an endless youth... while putting the future in parentheses, the system proceeds... the devaluation of the past... impatient... for cutting off the chains of archaic traditions and territorialities... and for instituting a society without a base of anchorage or opacity... and together with an indifference to historical time... collective narcissism is established... a clear symptom of the generalized crisis of bourgeois societies of…” And then I'm getting sleepy but I still hear his voice like it's inside a tunnel… "Since the jeans, the fashion has not stopped to promote the original clothing of the working class, the army and sports... bib pants... napkins... parkas and the sailor jacket, the jogging style... peasant skirts... the frivolous one identifying himself with the serious and the functional... and in doing so it adopts an explicitly parody style... imitating utilitarian clothes, fashion misadjust its points of reference... the solemnity dissipates and the forms lose what they could have to be polished or studied. Fashion and its exterior cease to be radically opposed... in parallel with the movement, everywhere visible, denial of oppositions... fashion today belongs to the sloppy, relaxed... the new must seem used and the studied spontaneous... a more sophisticated fashion imitates and parodies the natural..." And then I’m dreaming… dreaming I’m inside some kind of cellar/basement/garage/bar and there are some guys around involved in abstract conversations, and two of them are here on my front, confederating on international football issues, it looks, this is, they seem to get a bit upset about my getting into their conversation but then the first thing they do is asking that perennial question about “which is my club of election”. And so, I try my luck, I tell them that I have no club of choice, that I go with everyone and I do not belong to anyone, but somehow I prefer the black and whites... And then, as I say this, the guys seem to turn happy with my comment. They even want to pay me a drink, a big one, and so there we go making toasts to the black and whites. And I drink it all in a sudden because I'm really thirsty inside this dream, and so, as it goes, the guys want to know who I am after all, and why I´m I here, putting myself in the middle of their conversation and so, to this I say that “I'm an actor on a loan escaping from a bad movie in order to find true love” As as they hear they this get silent. Everything gets silent inside my dream. That's it, we all get silent when the word “love” gets in the game and so, I can stand this silence now, thus I’m already walking away in the direction of the wall, to the corner. And there I stand, and then I look in the mirror, but in this mirror I can’t see myself, what I see is some familiar face approaching. And then, here he is, dressed in sportive clothes, this mate gives me a clap in the back. And I don't know why, but I'm happy to meet him here. This is, as I look at him, I already know what he is looking for, and instantly I point to one dude with rastas til the floor, that is passing by, but he does not show much interest in that matter. So, after we have exchanged recycled drinks, there we go remembering some details about our past adventures, like that story about a bathtub we have stolen from some posh house… how we removed it through the window, how we made it come down through the branches of a tree on the window, and how we crossed all the city with it, even carrying people inside... and how we have ended up in cemetery, still holding that thing. And then I wake up, and as I clean vomit from my clothes I see the road, and the driver, this ex-history-teacher on the run, he stars to my figure now, inspecting it carefully, and for a long time he does not look the road, but the car does not wags. And then, he assures that by looking to my attire (dirty t-shirt, long-shorts-made-from-jeans and broken tennis) he can read my life pan. And so, as he says that, I tell him to go ahead. So, he gets his way to say that I wasn't properly loved as a child… “Certainly, you used to shut myself in my own world..”. and I, I somehow, I agreed... and then, he also suggests that “...We need to look around, because inside the self we have only darkness…” and here, I also agree... and then, he continues “...due to your inadequacy to this world you haven't yet managed to get out from adolescence period..”. and I agree again… and then “... probably you are still looking for something sacred in this moving about, but… beware, coz… you can get frustrated with your searching…” and here, I don't know if I should agree... and then, he says that I should look for dignity instead… and now, I’m not sure what he means with that… so, here we go now… both facing the road, facing the white line, classic contemporary music playing on the stereo... and then, then I come back to that dream... that dream inside the cellar-bar... There on the corner, I find a spiral staircase and down I go... around... and it cracks, and so, before reaching the bottom I stop... trying to spot any familiar face in that kind of hubballu performance that is going on. But, actually, I can't recognise any faces, because they have blinds on their eyes, and as I perceive it, they are actually screaming stuff related to the word CRISIS. Stuff like this. "Long live the crisis” they say, in unison “the crisis is friendly, the crisis is great... the crisis was always here when we came... the crisis is primordial...” and while they say this they turn around going against each other. And then, “Long live the crisis, love the crisis, live the crisis, trust the crisis... because the crisis is the challenge of nature itself”. And so, now I´m advancing between them, trying to pass unseen, but it's impossible, promptly they come to me and involve me in their performance, so… I'm being engulfed in their slogans now. “Long life to the crisis, because from the crisis comes cutting-edge technology... The crisis appeared to kill our desire for reality...  The crisis exists because men can not live only from dreams... The crisis is a river that belongs to the monopoly of the creator... The crisis is the energy of the universe itself persi... in the name of the father, the mother, the uncle, the son, the daughter, and the holy alien spirit, long live the to the crisis... long live the to the crisis now… let's dig our fertile lands... let's love the crisis... lets hug the unknown" they say. And finally, when I reach the other side of this CRISIS room, I get to some youngs, girls and boys seated on the floor in a circle, and I sit by their side. So, as I squat, one of the boys is already turning to me, saying “"Welcome bro, just close your eyes now bro, and you will see your panic turning into mint, coz we know that we matter, we know that we are are matter, and we know that the navel can save, this ventricle carries the love, so… we are actually doomed to give and to receive… and is, the illusion is real, and the reality is an illusion, then, everything is real, so, by now, we are more real than the concept of reality, yeah. And then, another one on his side, like in a competition, says something like this: “through the ruins of thought sacred monsters stroll and then… the circulation becomes slow and heavy as the irony falls into the gutter... and then, there are sirens that never stop... day and night a permanent pulsar... this is, reason deviates freedom... and freedom says that, it's always a good time to leave… coz being in the shadows creates worms, and the worms are bad advisors, that is, they have a crush on philosophy and sometimes they spit their poisonous puke in your face...”. And so, after that, their conversation motto changes into the money subject... and futurology and control… and then I wake up and ‘m on the road again, still listening the expat driver, and it's like his words are a continuation of the words I still retain from the dream, this is "...When there is no longer any military and police monopoly, and when, therefore, insecurity is constant… Individual violence and aggression is a vital necessity... on the other hand, as the division of social functions and... under the action of the central organs that monopolize the physical force establishes a daily security... that is where the use of individual violence proves to be exceptional and the extreme and unbridled impulsiveness of men is no longer necessary or useful or even possible. From the societies that carried out the absolutist states... a co-regulation of behaviours is replaced... a self-control of the individual, that is.. is to forget that violence was, from the most remote times, an imperative determined by the holistic organization of society... a behavior of honor and challenge... and as long as priority norms have priority over particular desires, as long as honor and revenge continue to prevail... the development of police apparatus, surveillance techniques and intensification of justice will only have a limited effect on private violence... hence the process of personalization that works to increase the responsibility of... individuals... favors well see, see, see, aberrant behaviors, unstable, indifferent in some way to the principle of reality... and for this very reason... in line with the dominant and correlative narcissism...” he keeps going and going and me dozing again, now coming back to my dream, listening to Zara, the transvestite, talking about politics and cosmology and genetics and cosmetics and micro-biotic organisms… And then, as we get to the costumes, I wake up, and while we wait for the passports to be seen, I'm hearing my driver's speech again. “Today the master's discourse is completely trivialized, desecrated, on equal footing with the media, education is a machine neutralized by the school apathy, made of dispersed attention and jaunty skepticism about knowledge... and all I have just finish to express could have been just black humor... because nowadays… for example... the sense of humor of the media no longer tries to ridicule the logic ... report or satirize… the humor now fills a factual function... It is not bad no more to confess personal problems... to show our own weaknesses... unravel the loneliness that we feel… nevertheless, the important now is to express all this in a second degree... through modernist hyperboles… and when I say modernist I mean... disruptions are becoming increasingly rare, the impression of déjà vu prevails over the novelty, the new changes in society are monotonous, we no longer have the impression of living in a revolutionary period... there is a trend fall in creativity rate of the vanguards, which on the other hand… coincides with the very difficulty affirmation of anyone being truly vanguardist... the fashion of “isms” have passed, the noisy manifestations of other times are no more appreciated nowadays... but this doesn’t mean that…” and our passport is being seen now. And then, as we advance in this new country, I turn to the expat driver and say “So your grace is talking about art now!?”; “Yes, the human being is artistic by nature... in every move we make art ... but into this discussion about what is or what isn't art, I don’t want to go… coz, I think that is an outdated issue…”, and then as he says that I also say “Not only is the concept of art is outdated... but all concepts we call concepts are actually outdated, as, the concept of God, the concept of knowledge, the concept of information, the concept of family,  the concept of what is a border, the concept of what is a country, and why we still need it, isn't it?” I say. And then he continues “As in all great dichotomies, this one about the body and spirit also got blurred, thus the body is no more relegated to a status of material positiveness… now the body is becoming more, we can say, some kind of ana-cosmic consciousness… an object-subject thing, a floating mélange of sense and sensitiveness…” and then I´m no more listening to his words, I’m just looking the paisaje, the landscape that surrounds us becoming more and more rough, this is, the road we are following now is entering some kind of desert, and so, while we advance through the haze, he keeps going like this… “Actually, at this precise moment, the world is being destroyed by brutal radiation, this is, the most powerful bombs ever made are currently being exploded somewhere... and that is much more clear that what people watch in the news… so, in my point view, if God is empty, as you said, we are just some kind of animist electrolysis in assonance with the phantasmagorias of the green but... there's really nothing that can be described about that, because, what is language, after all?” and here, as he get through this conversation about the aesthetics of linguistics, I put my hand in the door unlock button, and surreptitiously,  I make deep breach and there I go, opening the door and jumping out from the car while we are moving at high speed. And so, after much rolling on the gravel, I end up laying on a bank of sand, on the ditch, belly up, watching some kind of flaccid monsters passing through the sky, appearing and disappearing, changing its form, and then, as I look to the road again I see the car disappearing on the sand-covered horizon...