A lone wanderer is riding down the cold, dark High-Way, perched precariously upon his miniature goofy motor-bike. Huge trucks threaten to drive him off the road. The sun has departed to the other side of the planet & the all the land is in the twilight zone. The half-moon and the errant stars are snickering loudly at this obscene Joke on the face of the Planet Earth.
Dogstar is riding again. He has been riding for a long time. He has no idea where he is at that point in temporal reality. He can barely remember where he came from. He has no idea where he is going. He just has to go.
Dogstar is wearing his army jacket, his blue helmet covered with cosmic symbols, his cheapo Space-Age L.E.D. Woolworth's watch, & his purple-tinted sunglasses.
He passes an abandoned roadside stand. A decrepit sign hangs above it, swinging rustily in the autumnal west wind. "Eat It and Run" pro- claims the sign to all that pass by & away.
Meanwhile, towards the west, concealed behind a purple cloud is a silvery cigar-shaped object. There are highly advanced sentient beings inhabiting this object. They are watching Dogstar. They have been watching him for many years now. They know everything there is to know about him.
Dogstar passes into an abrupt patch of mist at the bottom of a hill. He sees faces in the mist, lit up by the glare of his headlight- beam, faces of a past he has left far behind. The faces leer at him & call to him, attempting to entice him into their realm. Doing his best to ignore them, he concentrates intently on the lines of a road he can barely see.
Dogstar has no idea where he is going. He just has to go.
* * * * *
Oh, where did it all begin? Where will it all end? Dogstar was born on a desolate beach in the midst of No-Where. His mother was a beat-nik, a would-be artist. His father could have been any of the male members attending the Birth-Day party. When Dogstar was born, he was annointed with beer & pot-smoke fumes were blown into his face. He cried & cried. He really didn't want to go through all this again, you see. He wanted to be back in the Space- Between-The-Lifetimes. * * *
When Dogstar was a kid, he never fought. He never played games. He neither wept nor smiled. He just sat on the beach all day, looking out at the grey, gloomy horizon, as the shore slowly eroded away.
* * * * *
Dogstar is washing the dishes at his stupid job. He lives in a cottage behind Motel 23 & that's the same place where he is washing the dishes. It seems to be his terrible karma to be stationed at this particularly mundane chore. He wonders what he did to deserve this. Why him?
Will Dogstar uncover the Meaning of Life here? As he plunges his arms into the greasy, detergent-laden waters, he sees thousands upon thousands of reflections of Dogstar washing the dishes upon the multitudinous surfaces of the soap-bubbles.
He slips a yellow pill into his mouth. After a while, he can't feel a thing.
* * * * *
Dogstar's girlfriend works in a topless bar/restaurant called "Cloud Nine Lounge", which goes with Motel 23, which is where he washes the dishes. Her name is Stella Telestar. She is the wet dream of many a lonely male patron of "Cloud 9 Lounge".
They had just engaged in some incredible tantric oral acrobatics - after-work recreation in the wee hours of the morning. Dogstar asked her:
"I just don't understand it. I'm not rich. I'm not powerful. What do you see in a guy like me anyway?"
"It is that far-far-far-away look in your eyes," she replied, toking on a joint. "You have been to Spaces few have seen."
Two Stars in the night fuse biologically as one orgasmic organism.
* * * * *
The Dogstar is rising high. Dogstar is high in the Northern Mountains & Dogstar is also very high. It is a place where he likes to commune with his soul, to leave worldly matter behind for awhile.
He has found a special spot, a barren crag from which there is an overwhelming view. It called to him.
The sun is setting in the west, while the pregnant yellow moon rises in the east. Dogstar looks towards where he came from, surveying all the distances he has travelled just to get to where he is now.
* * * * *
In a previous portion of this lifetime, Dogstar was drafted by the powerful United States Empire to combat the Yellow Communist Menace of the Far East. He objected most conscientiously to this imperial injunction. He told them he was a "Universalist Mystic", but they did not know what that was. They sent him, along with many, many others, against his will.
He found himself in a strange tropical country. Lt. Jim Jones, an ethnocentric egomaniac, ordered him and his platoon to fire upon the old men, women, & children of a defenseless village, for "strategic purposes". When no one was looking, Dogstar shot Lt. Jim Jones in the back, for "strategic purposes" of his own. He thought it would be good to speed up the balance of karma a little quicker. He made it look like an accident.
Dogstar was fed up with this war & wars in general. He went A.W.O.L. in a remote part of the country & took refuge in a Zen Buddhist Monastery.
* * * * *
When Dogstar was in the Zen Buddhist monastery, he asked his Master what the Meaning of Life is, then proceeded to enumerate all the possiblities as to what it could be. His Master slapped him & said:
"Stop your mind. You talk too much."
Later on, Dogstar was walking along with his Master in the rock garden. His Master pointed to the rocks & all that was around, & said:
"There. Do you see? It just is."
There-upon, Dogstar saw the Infinite Light.
* * * * *
The war was coming to an end. Dogstar was re-captured by the United States Empire. He spat furiously in their faces & babbled inanities: "I'm free, I'm free, you can't get me." Not knowing what else to do with him, they put him in an insane asylum & would keep him there until he was deemed to be in the proper state of mind to function in American Society again.
When Dogstar was in the insane asylum, he saw these weird lights flashing around people's heads. He huddled in a corner & heard the Voice of Silence, as the attendants injected more drugs into his veins.
There was another lunatic in there, a Black Muslim-Sufi, who swore that he was God. He roared with uncontrollable laughter as they applied shock treatments to his brain, screaming:
"Ha! Ha! Ha! Give me more! Give me more, you fools! Ha! Ha! Ha! I am God! I am Divine Electricity! I am Sheer Energy! I am All-Ah!"
* * * * *
Dogstar is sitting on the wall in University Town. He is selling drugs to students & kids, to supplement his meager income as a dishwasher. Every now & then, someone comes by to make the connection. To combat paranoia, Dogstar slips a yellow opiating pill into his mouth.
It is Columbus Day. A few hundred years ago, somebody by the name of "Columbus" supposedly "discovered" this continent, though there were already some people here first. Nothing has been quite the same since.
It is a chill, windy day. A crisp, golden leaf tumbles against the base of the wall. Someone takes a seat besides Dogstar. Dogstar looks over to see who it is.
It's just a sparrow.
* * * * *
Dogstar is Tuned In. God is Electricity. It is 5:00 in the wee pre-dawn morning. Rainbow hues surround the colored lightbulbs & the eternally burning candle-flame in his room.
He is listening to Powerful Mind-Expanding Music on his headphones, volume all the way up. The coiled wire connecting his headphones to the stereo system is his Umbilical Cord to a Higher Technological Dimension.
* * * * *
Dogstar is back on the wall again. Nearby, two dudes are arguing in front of the post office.
"Everything is Nothing!" shouts one.
"No! Everything is Everything!" screams the other.
"Little do they suspect," mentions a rather amused midget observing the proceedings, "they are both right & yet they are both wrong. Now, how can this be?"
* * * * *
Dogstar is Drunk. The room spins around in confusion. Up is down. Right is left. Everything is going wrong. All the connections have gone sour.
"I hate you!" screams Dogstar at his out-of-focus image in the mirror. "You are not me! I'm tired of being Dogstar! Fuck you!" He shrieks as he hurls his bottle against the mirror, shattering his reflection into shards & fragments of that which he once was.
Dogstar demolishes everything in his room, then goes out to get even more shit-faced than ever.
* * * * *
Dogstar is riding again, going God knows where. The long, dark High-Way stretches forever outwards into Infinity, forever out of reach of the limited range of his headlight-beam. He grits his teeth & hangs tightly onto the handlebars.
All of a sudden, the road shifts a very acute angle, then there is no road below him at all. There is Total Black Void all around, the only light being the blue dashboard & the headlight-beam illuminating nothing what-so-ever ahead. The motorbike is zooming through Sheer Emptiness. * * *
It is the end of autumn. All the leaves have fallen. The birds have departed to warmer climes. Most of the animals have gone to sleep for the long winter. It is very cold.
Dogstar is standing high on top of a lone tower that is one top of Warlock Mountain. With out-stretched arms, he hums an ancient chant to the departing sun. As the hues change from bright pink to dark amethyst on the western horizon, he realizes it is time to change his ways.
* * * * *
Dogstar has quit his job & the American Way of Life. He has quit drugs & alcohol. He has quit the world. He has gone to live in the Northern Mountains, sheltered in a secluded cave he has discovered.
He meditates in the snow. Sunlight shines through the branches of the evergreens. He enters the Silence-Between-The-Thoughts.
Then: