These are men of the jungle. They know nothing of us, the crucifixion of Jesus, the penguins in the Galapagos, the melting ice caps, the impending collapse of the US dollar, the nationalism sweeping across Europe, the Naaxalites of India, they nothing about any of this. They are pointing bows at a low flying propeller airplane, because they want to shoot down the airplane and eat it. They are heathen men, deeply connected to the snarled roots of the thick trees that stand so close together that the canopy blocks out the rain and the light – creating an ecosystem like that of a cave, a shallow cave; but a cave. They are cave men! But they live in the jungle and have ritualistic sacrifices, and treat their illnesses with broad bitter leaves. They have painted their bodies red, not with blood, they make this body paint because they are fierce hunters, and the red makes them that, in the eyes of the women the men who are painted in red are virile things; oozing semen, ready at any moment to impregnate them.
Bespoke Cashmere hearts these carnal souls, these men of men and their holy connection to an earth only they know. There is honesty in there existence; there is meaning in their subsistence. They have accurately avoided the pervasive alienation that closely accommodates our branded life that has no choice but to commoditize everything. “We are sick things,” we proclaim over a plate of strawberries and litchi’s and a delicate cup of rose hibiscus tea; and then we proclaim it again, knowing that there is nothing more to the statement, and glad that there is no discrepancy between our speech and our acts. Sick and conflicted, dreaming of the peppermint patty Murceilago, thinking how sick it would be to push through main street in Sag Harbor before letting it loose on those macabre twisting roads back to the bay; but also nauseated at the redevelopment of Mecca. Such a holy place, where we could see the footprints enclosed in glass, or the magical black rock that came from earth, where Gabriel and Mohammad broke bread, in this place – Mecca, they are building malls and thirty-five star hotels, and nothing about that sits well. How could the most sacred of the monotheistic pilgrimages – (traveling south on the Nile heading to Thebes for the Egyptians would have been a good pilgrimage, or following the Ganges up into the Himalayas, to watch the ice melt and see where Ram was born is another one, but the Egyptians and the Hindu’s, they have too many gods for our taste.) – the most sacred and holy of a pilgrimages, turned, in effect into a Islamic Disneyland.
We hope to make our Haj before the Carlyle group and Blackstone and all the rest begin to finance the false idols of capitalism and money in Mecca, but the tailor is taking too long with our dish-dash, and even then, problems abound.
These men of the jungle, they are also facing capitalism, as it slows eats away at the holy forrest, leaving tree stumps and wicked water stewing about. But they under the cover of nature, it is inhospitable, and though inroads will be made, and soon these hero’s will figure out a bow isn’t going to hurt Caterpillar bulldozers, that Dunkin Donuts make these coconut blueberry donuts that are really good, and everything else about an existence that has become homogenized in the understanding of development. But they have time, still some time, and there are some island where their primordial brothers still eat their meat raw, but only under the full moon; there are still some of those, and the world is okay, because Mecca will be commoditized, but there are other places — holy places filled with holy men who eat fruit and wear loin clothes, and when everything is too much, we will find these men and honor their gods together.
