Intro - Ch. 1 - Ch. 2 - Ch. 3 - Ch. 4 - Ch. 5 - Ch. 6 - Ch. 7 - Ch. 8 - Ch. 9 - Ch. 10 - Ch. 11 - Ch. 12 - Ch. 13

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This Moron

"You were going to tell me about the Fifth Insight," I reminded him.

"Who are you?" He asked.

"I'm the guy you promised to tell about the Fifth Insight," I said.

He eyed me warily with the bloodshot eye that wasn't pressed against the bar.  "Haven't we met?" He asked.

"Yes," I said.  "I'm the Idiot that was asking you about the Fifth Insight."

"Sure," he murmured, "I remember that guy now.   Jesus.  I wonder what ever happened to him."

"So," I said, trying another tactic.  "I understand you want to learn about the Fifth Insight."

"Yeah," he droned, his eyelids drooping.  "Yeah, I wanna know..."

I kicked him in the shin.  He yelped and bolted upright.   "I'll tell you everything I know," I said.  "First of all, as you know, it's all about...  ah...  the whole concept of the Fifth Insight boils down to a question of..."

"The competition for energy," he mumbled.  "I know, I know.  I know all about the competition for energy.  How we all grab energy from each other and dominate each other or submit to each other and all that crap, like we do with everything else, only more spiritually in this case, I know, I know...   and the sixth insight is about the way we choose to deal with the struggle for energy, the patterns we fall into, which are called our Idiot Dramas, because they're like plays that, once we're in the pattern, we play them over and over because we don't know any other way to deal with the struggle for energy because we're all Idiots and none of it matters anyway... and there's the seventh insight, about how we have to get rid of our Idiot Dramas, and the way we do that is by figuring out what got us into them in the first place and then resisting our Idiot Drama whenever we feel it playing again, and all of the other stuff, I know about all of that, so just skip ahead and get right to the point.  Tell me about the eighth insight, that's what I need to know."

"I'm sorry," I said, "you were only supposed to tell me about the Fifth Insight.  In detail.  Using examples and stuff.   Normally I have to wander around for whole chapters at a time before I get from one Insight to the next.  But here I haven't even finished the Suffering Bastard I started in the last chapter, and suddenly I've got three new Insights."

"That's nothing," the young man observed.   "Three paragraphs back I was shitfaced, and one paragraph later I was delivering a lucid monologue about spiritual progress."

"It's all right," I said.  "You said it so quickly I hardly understood a word, and what I did understand doesn't make much sense anyway."  I nodded down at his empty glass.  "Suffering Bastard?"  I suggested.

"No," he said, "just a little depressed.  I mean, you get these Insights, right, all this spiritual enlightenment, but what good does it do?  We're still these stupid, half-ass characters in this uneven, meandering narrative.  I want consistency!  I want a through-line!  I want recurring themes, motifs, symbolism.  I want to bushwhack my way through a tangled undergrowth of metaphor and simile, through subplots and allegories..."

"English major?"

"Comparative Lit.  You?"

"Watermelon packing and gift-shop retail."

"Nice work if you can get it."

"Tell me about it."

"I can't.  I don't know anything about it."

"That's all right, there's no time anyway.  I still need to know why I won't find Los Idiotos here in Ensenada before you inexplicably regress back into your drunken stupor."

"You won't find them here because they're not here.  They're all they way on the other side of Mexico.  Why did you think it was called the Asinine Prophecy?"

"I didn't know it was called the Asinine Prophecy.  I thought it was just called The Manuscript."

"Easy on the italics, dude.  I'm feelin' a little fuzzy again."

"I can tell.  You're picking up a Southern California dialect, too."

"Chill, dude.  Hold on."  With a palpable exertion of energy, the young stranger seemed to pull himself back together.  "All right.  I'm okay.  But we've got to be quick."

"You were asking why I thought it was called the Asinine Prophecy.  Without italics."

"Right.  Why did you?"

"I didn't."

"Good.  It's called the Asinine Prophecy because that's where they found the manuscript."

"What is?"

"Asininas, dude.  Asininas.  Whoa..."  And we that he slumped over again, drunk and incoherent and stereotypically Southern Californian.  I nodded to the bartender.

"Si, amigo?"  (He may have had the little upside-down question mark before the 'si.'  It was hard to tell with all the commotion.)

"What do you know about this 'Asininas?'"  I asked.

"Asininas?  Small town.  Quintana Roo."

"Quintana yourself."

"Quintana Roo.  A state, here in Mehico."

"You expect me to believe you've got a state called Quintana Roo?"

"Cancun is in Quintana Roo."

"All right.  Where can I get a cab?"

The bartender smiled and shook his head.   "It's three thousand miles, amigo."

"All right.  Where can I get a really fast, really cheap cab?"

And so I came to find myself hitch-hiking across the vast breadth of Mexico, puzzling over the meaning of the Asinine Prophecy as I made my painstaking, meandering, adventurous, allegorical way toward Quintana Roo...

...next chapter...