Fools Die

Mario Puzo

Book I

“Listen to me.  I will tell you the truth about a man’s life. I
will tell you the truth about his love for women. That he never
hates them. Already you think I’m on the wrong track. Stay
with me.  Really – I’m a master of magic.

                “Do you believe a man can truly love a woman and con-
stantly betray her?  Never mind physically, but betray her in
his mind, in the very ‘poetry of his soul.’ Well, it’s not
easy, but men do it all the time.

                “Do you want to know how women can love you, feed you
that love deliberately to poison your body and mind simply to
destroy you? And out of passionate love choose not to love you
anymore? And at the same time dizzy you with an idiot’s ecstasy.
Impossible? That’s the easy part.

                “But don’t run away.  This is not a love story.

                “I will make you feel the painful beauty of a child, the
animal horniness of the adolescent males, the yearning suicidal
moodiness of the young female.  And then (here’s the hard part)
show you how time turns man and woman around full circle, ex-
changed in body and soul.

                “And then of course there is TRUE LOVE. Don’t go away!
It exists or I will make it exist.  I’m not a master of magic
for nothing.  Is it worth the cost? And how about sexual fid-
elity?  Does it work?  Is it love?  Is it even human, that perverse
passion to be with only one person? And if it doesn’t work,
do you still get a bonus for trying?  Can it work both ways?
Of course not, that’s easy. And yet –

                “Life is a comical business, and there is nothing funnier
than love traveling through time. But a true master of magic
can make his audience laugh and cry at the same time. Death
is another story.  I will never make a joke about death.  It is
beyond my powers.

                “I am always alert for death.  He doesn’t fool me.  I spot
his right away.  He loves to come in his country-bumpkin dis-
guise; a comical wart that suddenly grows and grows; the dark,
hairy mole that sense its roots to the very bone; or hiding
behind a pretty little fever blush.  Then suddenly that grinning
skull appears to take the victim by surprise.  But never me.
I’m waiting for him. I take my precautions.

                “Parallel to death, love is a tiresome, childish business,
though men believe more in love than death. Women are another story.  They have a powerful secret.  They don’t take love ser-
iously and never have.

                “But again, don’t go away. Again; this is not a love
story. Forget about love. I will show you all the stretches of power.   First the life of a poor struggling writer.  Sensitive. Talented. Maybe even some genius. I will show you the artist getting the shit kicked out of him for the sake of his art. And why he so richly deserves it.  Then I will show him as a cunning criminal and have the time of his life.  Ah, what a  joy the true artist feels when he finally becomes a crook. It’s
out in the open now, his essential nature. No more kidding around about his honor. The son of a bitch is a hustler. A
conniver.  An enemy of society right out in the clear instead
of hiding behind his whore’s cunt of art. What a relief.
What pleasure. Such sly delight. And then how he becomes an
honest man again.  It’s an awful strain being a crook.

                “But it helps you accept society and forgive your
fellowman. Once that’s done no person should be a crook unless he really needs the money.

                “Then on to one of the most amazing success stories in the history of literature. The intimate lives of the giants of
our culture. One crazy bastard especially. The classy world.
So now we have the poor struggling genius world, the crooked world and the classy literary world.  All this laced with
plenty of sex, some complicated ideas and you won’t be hit over the head with and may even find interesting. And finally on
to a full-blast ending in Hollywood with our hero gobbling up
all its rewards, money, fame, beautiful women. And. . .
don’t go away – don’t go away – how it all turns to ashes.

                “That’s not enough? You’ve heard it all before? But re-
member I’m a master of magic.  I can bring all these people truly alive. I can show you what they truly thing and feel.  You’ll
weep for them, all of them, I promise you that. Or maybe just laugh. Anyway, we’re going to have a lot of fun. And learn something about life. Which is really no help.

                “Ah, I know what you’re thinking. That conning bastard trying to make us turn the page. But wait, it’s only a tale I
want to tell.  What’s the harm? Even if I take it seriously,
you don’t have to. Just have a good time.

                “I want to tell you a story, I have no other vanity.
I don’t desire success or fame or money. But that’s easy, most men, most women don’t, not really.  Even better, I don’t want love. When I was young, some women told me they loved me for my long eyelashes.  I accepted. Later it was for my wit. Then
for my power and money. Then for my talent. Then for my mind – deep.  OK, I can handle all of it. The only woman who scares me
is the one who loves me for myself alone. I have plans for her.
I have poisons and daggers and dark graves in caves to hide her head. She can’t be allowed to live. Especially if she is sexually faithful and never lies and always puts me ahead of everything and everyone.

                “There will be a lot about love in this book, but it’s
not a love book. It’s a war book. The old war between men who are true friends. The great ‘new’ war between men and women. Sure it’s an old story, but it’s out in the open now. The
Women’s Liberation warriors think they have something new, but it’s just their armies coming out of their guerrilla hills.
Sweet women ambushed men always: at their cradles, in the kitchen, the bedroom. And at the graves of their children,
the best place not to hear a plea for mercy.

                “Ah, well, you think I have a grievance against women.  But I never hated them. And they’ll come out better people
than men, you’ll see.  But the truth is that only women have
been able to make me unhappy, and they have done so from the cradle on.  But most men can say that.  And there’s nothing to be done.

                “What a target I’ve given here. I know – I know – how ir-
resistible it seems. But be careful. I’m a tricky storyteller,
not just one of your vulnerable sensitive artists.  I’ve taken
my precautions.  I’ve still got a few surprises left.

                “But enough. Let me get to work. Let me begin and let me end.

12/12/12

Megalomaniacal thought appreciation:  The scruffy little guru obsessed, global
domination makes for interesting iconography.  Ah, to achieve a type
of modified immortality that takes the sum total of being and transgresses
alternatives seeking the path of least resistance.  Efficiency technologies serve to make
the slippery path speedier.  Now what?  More ‘me time’.  Time to wait for my well
defined wants to be renewed.  Ask, and ye shall receive, to an extent.  Biocapacitance profiles
capacity parameters and triangulates peregrinations into and out of states of heightened
awareness and higher thinking recorded into something new, novel. 
With a wealth of modern historical revelation being reinvented or discovered in Petri-media
daily, utterances correlate what was then to now.  When now?  12/12/12 @ 0054.

The world will be over in a less than a fortnight, supposedly.  I wonder what that mean?
Hollywood depicts an asteroid/flood/tsunami/earthquake.  Wishful thinking for the
feeling secure in proofed homes or thatched bunkers in the middle of somewhere.
Will there be a noticeable event, occurrence, or happening that can be recognized
the world over to any and every sentient being occupying the planet concurrently?
Probably not. Lighting differences.  Time zones.  Poisson distributions.  Factors and
variables in infinite abundance need to be equated, universally speaking.

                I want a woman to relax with.  Someone I can use my imagination
upon and won’t talk back like a thoughtful participant.  Someone I can
indoctrinate with my own thoughts on free speech; which rich white landowners
have the right to exercise; with me at my country club estate.  It’s absurd, but
the prison system operates similarly.  The Algerian, Horatio, strap-licker, they put themselves there.
If you believe in both free-will and destiny like I do…One man pulls himself up and
another person pushes himself back down.  Could there be free wills that have freely
renounced freedoms by agreeing to something or by performing a certain act?
To whom?  Or what?  Or for what reason? Less obvious. 

Semiotic Rheology and Orthopraxy

NuPeter Jupiter
The pearlier gates
Reactive ABRAXAS

Socially awkward astrophysicist
on (his/her) way to outerspace
finds (his/her) pressure stabilized
quarters cozy enough, not
enough living space on
the old planet for all of
all morally divergent cultures,
especially those with no respect
for the mathematics upon which
all of civilization wrests its
universal living from mother Earth’s
loosely tilled land-hands around
which I would work myself if
I weren’t so freeze-dried and Tangry.

Oh, to convince myself that there’s
something I actually like or that I’m
similar to would upset my ultimate
ideals of differentiation of my mind
from this body, overcome with spirits.

J High Priest; Church_of_Separatists
@ NuSeParaSites dot comma chameleon.
Do they get Internet in outerspace?

They differentiate the integral of gamma-
radiation, the wavelength that all new ideas
and NuCombinations of existing Infra(red)
structure that heatsink components
inculcated with the NuReceptive
Mediae, upon which foundations
of our Gnuleretroactive Pop institutions
update sensory timerates, even through BCI
implements to the deaf, dumb, and blind!

“Midway through the arraignment I looked at my watch.  It had stopped.  Odd.  It was the first time I could remember that happening.  Then I noticed that Manson was staring at me, a slight grin on his face.

                It was, I told myself, simply a coincidence.”

                Bugliosi, Helter Skelter, pg. 256

“I stretched out in the grass, my skull on a large, flat rock and my eyes staring straight up at the milky way, that strange breach of astral sperm and heavenly urine across the cranial vault formed by the ring of constellations: that open crack at the summit of the sky, apparently made of ammoniacal vapors shining in the immensity (in empty space, where they burst forth absurdly like a rooster’s crow in total silence), a broken egg, a broken eye, or my own dazzled skull weighing down the rock, bouncing symmetrical images back to infinity.  The nauseating crow of a rooster in particular coincided with my own life, that is to say, now, the cardinal, because of the crack, the red color, the discordant shrieks he provoked in the wardrobe, and also because one cuts the throats of roosters.”

                Bataille, Story of the Eye, pg. 48

120912

FREEDOM Abolitionists wish to abolish freedom, or the notion thereof, that it is
altogether impossible to abolish one without abolition of the counter-balance weight
that runs a thin line between the word freedom and its inverse meaning, slavery.
Freedom has been abolished, the freedom to both own a slave and to be a slave.
If only this should be the case!  In fact, slave owners have evolved into faceless
entities, impossible to Target®, and slaves themselves have no body to blame but
their own, themselves, each other, and enforce blameworthiness for the sake
of management positions, pricks.  Legally, therefore, slavery has been
abolished; realistically, however, the word and the meaning remain.
With the evolution of syntactic structuralism, “the system of differences
that is langue,” erodes the axon and broadens the transmittance gap.
A world dominated by machines designed to divide and conquer deus ex
extinct alone together in separate togetherness.  Nothingness is unabridgeable.
The son of the judge of judges is constantly being scrutinized and corrected for
exact measure in dimension.  The medium is the body, the message is the soul.
What is fit for discourse?  I am not at liberty to say.  Amanuensis
to whom?  For whom? By whom?  Abstract ‘I,’ Josiah, mysterious king
of the Pentateuch.   Because, for where there’s doubt, truth still exists, and
who has the final say?  The rippler of ripplers, may he agitate
in peace, posthumously.  Dark-side engineers Death Star in space, an
ill-defined sphere when nature is shaped like an ellipse
transforming the average of linear regression filters.