There's No Business, Like No Business, Like No Business I Know.

There’s no Business like no business like no business I know.

In India they’ve got people divided up into a caste system. Basically these break down to ‘the aristocrats’, ‘the merchants’, ‘the warriors’ and ’the scum’. The same system exists worldwide only it looks different so you might not see it. You can get a real feel for it in England if you were inclined to go there. You’re born into your class and generally you stay there. In England you can see a warrior become an aristocrat when a soccer star emerges. You can see individuals shift in either direction over time, but generally... uh huh.

I don’t need to go into all the permutations and possibilities of this. You can do some version of that; depending on which caste system you are in intellectually. It’s enough for the purpose of this piece to accept that pecking orders exist. These pecking orders exist ‘within’ the systems too. You’ve got your Captains of Industry. You’ve got your Prince of Thieves. You’ve got whatever you’ve got and you understand whatever you recognize according to the way you’ve defined it. No small part of the way you’ve defined it is defined by the way you have allowed yourself to be defined.

Now there is an argument for being happy with your lot; satisfied with what you got. And there is an argument for being ambitious, upwardly mobile and shaping the world a little closer to the hearts desire. In the first case it would depend on being able to isolate what it is that you have which cannot be improved upon with the addition of all the world’s gain. In the later case, the greatest good you can obtain to is the discovery of the same in the midst of the entire world’s gain.

Caste systems are oppressive to be sure. However there are natural caste systems you can’t get around unless you’ve got a division or two of politically correct enforcement agents. For instance, a gum-popping moron of a head-banger chick with a master’s in Felatio and 8 grades of the usual curriculum will most likely find herself at different parties than Gwyneth Paltrow nee Coldplay. Nor will she understand Gwyneth if she asks her what time it is in French. However, an incoherent rap thug could well find his way into whoever’s doing the dumbed down version of Leonard Bernstein throwing a party in this present cycle.

There’s a lot to see as you watch the new guards replace the old guards with whatever version of the same old same old is current in the display case. You can see Debbie Reynolds in Brittany Spears. You can Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant working it out between Nicolas Cage and Jim Carrey. Watch Tom Cruise try to get the Newman thing which seems to want to go to Maconahey; I’m afraid I can’t spell Mathews name. You see Lady Elton John taking over for Liberace. Harry Connick’s a re-run. I don’t know who Collin Farrell is supposed to be but then neither does he. The roles are always there and only the people inside them change. It’s a kind of stations of the cross- but I won’t be digressing into that one for you; the royal road of sorrow is for another piece.

Let’s make a right here and then two lefts into the cul-de-sac. I like this area. It’s got a great view of the valley off to the right there and of course you can see the cities in flame in the other direction. They’re not really burning down in the usual sense; they’re just disintegrating over extended time. However they are certainly no less on fire for the time lapse. They’re burning, the inhabitants are burning and frankly, the whole universe is on fire. I don’t know if the physicists have gotten to that yet, they’re always lagging way back but they’ve got to prove the thing in ways we, the directly experiential, do not. Hell, they haven’t even gotten much on electro-magnetism yet. Tsk Tsk. And I had a flying saucer land right in front of me and even chatted with the inhabitants until my associate said, “I think we’ve better leave.” He was wrong but it’s too late now.

Now here’s the thing. Consciously or unconsciously most of the inhabitant’s chasing the Hollywood/Big Lottery winner thing are gas stations for the actual thing burning on the screen. Everybody playing the role of the thing they’re emulating in all of the bars and restaurants and raves and bedrooms and wherever- are filling stations for the big show. I know some of you don’t like waiting in line but if you could just see the size of some of the lines you are presently standing in...

Here’s the deal. I know you can’t stand in front of a mirror for forty years and watch it happening but let’s use the imagination; I know it hurts but just try. Remember when you were a little red-cheeked cherub? Remember how filled with life and energy you were? (Probably not but look around- you’ll see it). Then remember the division of life that occurred at puberty? It was at that point that you became a gas tank. Over time you have been able to observe (if you were watching) how the gas level has dropped (cue to ‘foolish virgins’ parable)...You can see the lines in the face, the gray in the hair, the stoop in the back; feel the depleted organs and go ahead... expand on that in your own time. You seem to be running low on gas. Now, none of this had to happen- except that it always happens ‘there’. There isn’t HERE. Further than this I won't go at this time. And most of you won’t be willing to either.

So outside on the big ball of wax that melts constantly into the shape of the shifting object of desire...whoa, look at all that melting wax!...boy, that’s something. Out there you got your caste systems and your pecking orders. You have your graphic examples of failure and success, or at least what you have been told these things are. You’ve bought in. You’ve cut the deal and vroom!!! Amazing, it looks like it is happening. It is happening and at the same time it isn’t happening. The price you paid to succeed was bad enough. Think about the price you paid to fail.

No, it’s not the way it looks. You may think it would be a groove to be scamming all those models like Mick in Milan (or wherever he’s doing it this week). You may think it would be cool to be boffing those babes at Mylar (or whatever Trump calls that monstrosity of his in Palm Beach.). You may think it would be cool to be president of the United States, Janet Jackson’s tit, Dean Koontz or any one of a pack of talentless people who lip sync their way through bad fabrications of great arts potential... but I assure you it is not. Poetic justice is watching pretty girls grow old; or the guys whose identity, increment by increment slips back into the melting, reforming wax leaving them clueless are to who they really are or even used to be. Heh heh.

All this time you have been in possession of a treasure chest sunken in the depths of the internal Davy Joneses locker...-full fathom five ye scum!!! All you had to do was drop the hook. Yea, I’m talking in riddles and using symbols. That’s how it is.

You work it out and outward, until you are compelled to fall back upon the dead leaves of former generations composting the never ending Now that you have managed to divide up into segments that imprison the mind into regret of the one side and fear of the other. You could have been working it 'in'. Any time is the right time to start. You can only ever start Now. You will never be able to start anywhere else but Now. And it will only ever happen Here. It’s tough to realize; with all the money flying around and all those lights and sounds and the heat of glamour and admiration and hunger; lots of hunger. It’s hard to realize that the actual thing they are admiring, celebrating, praising and hungering for didn’t even get invited to the show. It is so difficult to realize that the only thing worth having and being is readily available though it may not possess the same flash.

Different worlds, baby. Same world, maybe. You decide.