from The Varieties of Religious Experience

Extended Forecast

Reading the thermometer in Latin, half past Topanga, Santa Barbara & Nagasaki.   A leaf slowly turning yellow, then maybe orange, & later becoming almost translucent?   It’s later than you think, but four hours earlier than that in Samoa, glowing in the dark, a dark like silver, & damp.   We can no longer submit to a compromise so inconclusive, whatever relentless details inform the beach pavement, tilted in the rain, with your picture on the cover.   A cut-off low will bring variable high cloudiness & gusty winds overnight.   The weekend will see monsoon rain & winds riding in on the Pineapple Express, whipping up the waves, channeling the voices of the ancient lost Lemurians.   Begging indulgence without vows or refuge, sinking deep into the underwater pavement, dissolving pearls in gasoline to justify your margins, betrayed by space & time.   The random apprehension where sea meets sky in the pretense & the vapor, to reconcile the distance & the time it takes, steeped in heavy breathing, designed to lull you past the coma.   The lost continent of Lemuria was first discovered by the Vikings during their annual Kon Tiki Barbeque & Surf Competition in the South Pacific.


Stomping with the Lemurians

Augustus Le Plongeon claimed that ancient Mayan writings proved that the Maya of Yucatan were not only older than the later civilizations of Greece and Egypt, but were descendents of a civilization that had existed on the lost continent of Mu (later known as Lemuria).   An Anglo-American explorer named James Churchward, a close friend of Le Plongeon, wrote that the continent of Mu stretched from the Hawaiian Islands to Fiji & from Easter Island to the Marianas.   His findings were set down in the five main volumes of the Mu series published from 1926 to 1931.   By studying various ancient texts Churchward believed he had discovered the existence of the long lost continent that had sunk below the Pacific Ocean after a cataclysmic earthquake approximately 60,000 years earlier.   According to Churchward, the Hawaiian Islands & the Pacific Islands are the remaining mountain peaks of that lost continent.   Madame Elena Petrovna Blavatsky described Lemurians as the third root race to inhabit the earth.   They were egg-laying beings with a third eye that gave them psychic powers & allowed them to function without a brain.


Moment’s Notice

Early morning aerial shot zooming down on a beat-up ‘64 El Camino parked on an empty stretch of the PCH overlooking the beach.   The El Camino is overall a pale sunbleached blue, the hood is bright green, the driver’s side quarter panel painted with rust primer, passenger door black, rear gate white.   There’s a surfboard & a wetsuit in the back.   A man & a woman lean against the front of the car, gazing out at the sea.

MURIEL NITRATE - The ocean is dark like the blood of fuchsias
BENNY IGUNANA - Dedicated to an articulate (though incoherent) neon you might find scribbled onto a spoonful of wet sand