MY DAILY RIDE TO MONUMENT VALLEY, Part 3

Tags: Carl Jung, San Miguel, St. Michael, flaming sword, Culver City, veterans shelter, U.S. Vets, short arms inspection, Christianity, prayer candle, factotum, jarvis, marquisdejolie, homeless, military, disabled veteran, ghost dance, Harley Davidson, Monument Valley, Hollywoodland, Ironweed, Sees The Stars, Jolieblond, White Rhino, Crusty The Stockboy, Waterworm #63B, Somnambulant Elevator, Mudhead, Bukowski

A giant, reverberating buzz alarm went off throughout the shelter complex. It sounds like the buzz a clothes dryer makes when your laundry is done, only amplified so that people in the next city over, Culver City, can hear it. It sounds when electricity to the shelter cuts off.

"What's THAT?" my querilous, aromatic homeless attorney asks about the noise he is hearing through my cell phone to his.

"Short arms inspection," I lied, "Gotta go."

I laid the envelope on top of the pile of other stuff I hope to get around to some time, some day; stuff for me and stuff for other people that I'm really not looking forward to doing not because the stuff is difficult so much as the stuff requires me to switch over to the other side of my brain to do, the left side. I don't much care for the left side.

I grab a book of matches and carefully light my red San Miguel prayer candle. Yes, I am a Christian and fuck anybody who doesn't like it and fuck anybody who is offended by my religion or my rudeness. I am what I am and fuck anybody who doesn't like it. Fuck 'em for being hypocrites and fuck 'em on general principle. I worship in my own way and care about people's souls, even the fuckheads. Especially the fuckheads. But Lord, God Almighty . . . protect me from them.

I light my candle and make my prayer of thanks and my plea for protection. The picture on the front of the candle of St. Michael with his sword raised against the furry black demon comforts me. I hear the 'baRUMP rump rump' of the Fatboy idling in the back of my head and marvel at how right Jung ( Carl Jung, disciple of Sigmund Fraud (sic) for you glass teat-ers) got it.

One of my books from the homeless shelter library says that Jung regarded personality as a VERY complex structure of competing fragments struggling for rulership. Attaboy, Carl, tell it like it is. I have names for all of my personality fragments. Gives them the dignity I think they deserve.

I step back from my San Miguel prayer candle and let the Indian in me do a little ghost dance against my enemies, several of which are other fragments of my own personality. The biker for one. The soldier is another. And the priest in me can be a pretty snotty hindrance. 'BaRUMP rump rump' I hear in the back of my head.