"An unenlightened man is like a man in a cave with his hands bound.
He is looking at the wall and seeing the spot of light from the entrance to the cave which is behind him.
You step into the dark cave, out of the light and try and tell the man there is more to his life than this.
But he exclaims almost like a madman that "He sees the light! He sees the light!",
looking at the beam of light on the wall, all the time telling you to look there also. Here lies the 'finite' man.
“But sir if you only look around you, you will see that is just a ‘fraction’ of the Light.”
But the man refuses, for around him at first is darkness, and
The Light is behind him in the middle of the darkness, bigger and brighter than ever before.
But he refuses to look and therefore he cannot see what you and I can see.
He is the ‘limited’ man.
We the 'Infinite' men.
Which one are you?”
Chapter One: OSKAR ARRIVES
I’ll never buy a frigging Porsche-911 again!
I got a great deal on a new model for around $200,000.00.
I had it custom made.
I went to the auto repair shop for my porsche, one of four of my sports cars I owned,
which was not running right and probably needed a tune-up.
Stupid car! Joe, my good friend, told me not to buy it.
As I pulled into the shop, I was greeted by Joe, my old
Italian auto mechanic friend. He had worked on all my cars
since I bought my house in Beverly Hills, ‘hills’ for about 3.5 mil.
"I told you not to buy that thing. Back already, huh?"
"I had a t-shirt with the same name as the car on it, so I HAD to buy it." I told Joe.
"Yeah, yeah, you rich dudes just don't know what to do with all your money! Don’t have to work like us working-class people out here!"
“Oh yeah, you try promoting a couple of million records a month! We started laughing. He had reminded me of a song I wrote and had made bank on.
Andre Nickatina's record company brought the lyrics and the music which I had written and composed for a kool 1.5 million dollar check. It sold 5 million copies in two months. And I received a few royalties payments from that also.
In the Music Industry, you could go years barely able to pay the rent and eat. And the following month write that one song that makes you millions...almost overnight!
Of course the more your lyrics echoed the ‘voice of the wilderness’ the better your chances of making bank.
Some of my song lyrics went as follows:
"Popping pills in Beverly Hills,
They don't know what to do with all their money.
Watching poor men work is a very cheap thrill,
They watch them die and think it's very funny-
Poppin' pills. In Beverly Hills. They’re popping pills.
In Beverly, Beverly, Beverly Hills!"
Copyrighted © 2015/17 by BLP. All Rights Reserved.
I don't know if he heard it or not, but the tune of it was playing in my head at the time. It was an exaggeration of the attitude rich people had towards their service people, servants, and the people that worked for them. Well, at least it was suppose to be.
Then I saw him. I don't know what made me look that way, but in the corner of the room, with a blanket around his cold, naked, body was this tall black man. He looked as lost as he was naked. He was shivering and had his head down in a white cup of coffee. From where I was act, he looked like, well, ‘down and out in Beverly Hills’ except this time it was a black man...no such thing.
"WTF!?" I said, curious and smiling. Was this some sort of publicity stunt? This guy was sitting at attention like Forrest Gump.
"Oh that character over there!?” Joe started laughing, “Get this! He comes prancing in here butt ass naked and asked that we work on his body. Work on his body!? Can you imagine that? I thought he was some sort of crazy fag or something, but he serious thought that you worked on ‘human bodies’ in here!”
Joe pointed to the sign above the garage door, “In a Body Shop!” I saw the sign, ‘Joe’s Body Shop!’ “
Get it?" Joe started laughing but trying to keep it low so the young black man in the corner could not hear him.
"You mean he thought this was a massage room or some sort of hospital?"
"Yeap! He thought this was a place where you came to get a tune-up on your physical body. Now get this! He claims to be from Outer Space, you know. He said he had just arrived from Mars!" Joe started to laugh again. And I thought all the kooks were in Congress! Joe laughed again.
"Fruitcake!" I said giggling.
"Yeap, seems like it. He lost a few too many marbles along the way, poor kid, doesn’t look over 30. We are trying to get in touch with his case manager or someone right now, but he won't give us much information, except that he is from another planet."
“Bruther from another planet! Takes all kinds," I said laughing again.
"I guess so, " Joe said. "So, what's wrong with the bad boy now?" I turned my attention back to my car.
"I'm not sure. When I turn it on, it makes this funny sound."
"Sounds like you might need a new starter."
"Again? Wasn't it just in the last six weeks that I needed a new one?"
"Brewster? Get another car. Or at least update to the deluxe version. They don’t break down. The newer models are way better than the old models."
"Sure. NO problem! What is money for anyway but to spend away as if it was nothing.?"
"It's back by nothing, but you work your ass off for that ‘nothing’!"
We both laugh.
“Why I’ll be damn!” Joe said brighter than he had ever been before. “For the first time in years the arthritis in my shoulder is gone. I had that pain for years and years and finally I don’t even feel a trace of it. Can you believe that?” Joe rotated his arm a bit.
“Will miracles ever cease?” I said smiling.
“The pain is gone. The freaking pain is gone! I never felt so good in my life! Every since I saw that crazy black guy standing laughing in the middle of my garage! Boy was that a laugh!” Then Joe remembered that when the naked black guy came into the garage he had touched him on the shoulder. It was then, exactly then, that the arthritis in his arm had disappeared!
I turned and looked into the face of Oskar. He was inches from my face. Mysterious, quiet, and innocent. In the passenger seat as if he drove in with me.
He was in my car just inches from me. I did not see him move, or the car door open, or close. He was just there mysteriously smiling at me.
"Hi, my name is Oskar and I need to see the President of the United States, after they 'fix' my body."
I didn't know what to say, and frankly, he scared the shit out of me. He was a black man, but had the most piercing, clear, blue eyes you ever seen...on a BLACK GUY! They hypnotized you. It was if you saw your whole life in one flash right before you, and all you were left with, was this empty moment. This vast present where the future was passing into the Present as fast as the past was leaving it. All I had was this Infinite Present. And I didn’t want to be in it for some reason. I lived in a dream world. I made my dreams come true with blood, sweat, and tears, laughter, and money and stepped on nobody. My reality of my “paradise on earth”, was a denial of my ‘private hell on earth’, I shared with no one, and tried to avoid at all cost. I was dying of lung cancer. If my record producers knew this, they would drop me like a super hot potato.
Now I was stuck in it and there was no place else to go. I was stuck in the middle, jokers to the left of me, clowns to the right, and Oskar with me, right there in the middle. Oskar??? He was inches from my face.
"What the fuck you doing in my car? Get out!"
"Please, I know you can help me. I have got to talk to the leader of your planet of the utmost important matter."
"What?" I said, almost laughing, 'The world is gonna end?" I looked at Joe. Joe just shrug his shoulders. His ‘good’ feeling shoulders.
"Yes." Oscar said and somehow the tone of this voice…”Your planet has been selected for termination.”
"By whom?" I said, patronizing him.
'Men from Mars."
"Ok, buddy, I had it, I was having a little fun with you, but please, get the hell out of my car!"
Now during this time, Joe had looked under the hood and he popped his head out and said, 'Brewster, this is your lucky day. One of your wires were bear, a gopher may have gnawed on it, and it was shorting out your alternator.
That’ why you were losing speed. I just replaced it and you are good to go, but bring it back in here for a complete tune-up and I will replace the whole thing, with a new one. But today it's free."
"No shit!?" I said. "Thanks Joe."
I drove out of the shop and was halfway down the street before I remembered that this other guy was in my car.
“Look, I’m gonna take you home with me and let you get a shower and get some clean clothes and possibly something to eat. OK?”
“Thank you, Brewster.”
“No problem. But as soon as we get you dressed and all cleaned up, I’m gonna find some place where you can stay or get in touch with your relatives.”
“My father and mother are on Mars.”
“Yeah, and I’m snow white. Ok, guy…”
“Oskar.”
“What?!”
“My name is Oskar, and I came to give your planet a warning.”
“Well, welcome to earth, Oskar.”
“Thanks Brewster. Thank you very much.”
Then it dawn on me that having my car fixed put me in a good mood. There WAS something strange about this guy, but he looked innocent enough. Maybe he was a mental case and had rich parents? Reward time!
Then it dawn on me. I was not the good Samaritan type. I never questioned how he got into my car, and why he got in my car, and I never told him my name. But around him you felt extraordinary safe and at peace. Not only that but you somehow felt that even the world was changing to accommodate Oskar’s wishes. Like driving with him home, the streets were super clear in front of me. People moved out of the my way and were waving ‘Hi’ to me, smiling. It was very weird.
We were well into traffic, and the traffic was crowded as usual in Los Angeles, but it was flowing and that was all that counted.
We sat quietly, when suddenly Oskar cried out, “Wait! Stop the car! Stop the car!” I put my foot on the brake by instinct. I had too. Oscar was screaming at the top of his lungs, I thought I was about to hit a kid or little old lady in the streets I did not see.
The car was not even at a stop before Oskar had the car door open and was halfway out the Highway, the blanket slowly falling from his shoulders. Now he was streaking all of Los Angeles.
Then I saw what all the commotion was about. A little kitten had made it’s way to the center of the street and cars were swishing by it at such a tremendous speed that it was too scared to cross.
And there went Oskar. Running towards the cat, naked as a jaybird.
He swooped the kitten up in his arms, and the cat rested there as if he knew Oskar all his life. It was a nice rescue. However, when I stopped, the car behind me didn’t. And neither did the car behind him. OR the car behind him.
The ambulance and fire department, and L. A. Police were there in about 10 minutes. People were in their cars cursing, and wondering what the fuck had happened, and Oskar was standing butt-naked in the middle of the street with the thick, hairy tail of a cat covering his essentials.
In short. It was a 53 car pile up. But that was the tip of the iceberg!
All the way down the street, you could see the TV camera zooming in on each car that was in the rear of the car in front of it, and so on. All the way down the road, 240 cars deep. The biggest car pile-up in the history of the world. Just one more car than the biggest pile-up in America in 2008 which involved 239 cars and buses. Though only three people were killed in that accident, there were some injuries, but no fatality in this car accident.
And the cop let us go without a ticket. After all, I did not hit anybody, and even some of the people were cheering Oskar for saving the cat. It was a weird day already and it was not even noon.
Again, it seemed like some sort of dream. We were in this accident, and all of a sudden we were out of it, and on our way again as if it never happened.
I pulled into the driveway of my house.
“Well, this is home.” I said, and realized that Oskar still had the cute cat with him.
“Yes, this is home,” Oskar said, “but not for long. Not for long.”