Hashish Dreaming

By Elias Sassoon

A novel that isn’t a real novel; a novel that really is the rambling of a disjointed 21st century dude exhibiting cerebral symptoms caused by inhaling the hashish haze overhead. Being stoned to release the inner self; reaching that higher state of consciousness, and then gaining a real understanding, that’s what that’s what we have. We also have the opportunity to dig deep into the tender bowels of an individual’s psyche and unearth the inner dimensions of the idea. Unearthing it all, unearthing the mind’s fertile crescent in which action transpires and action inspires to set an action hero into orbit. Who is this action hero? Merely the neurotic who sits alone in a corner thinking thoughts about modern life and exactly where they fit into it. Experimentation with the mind, by letting the mind go, by not trying to contain it, by letting it be honest and forthright, that is what Hashish Dreaming is all about. It’s nothing more, and nothing less than that.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312051515

Elias Sassoon

Elias Sassoon is the author of approximately, roughly, terminally twenty-five works that include short story collections, novels, poetry collections and non-fiction, essay collections. While producing his writing by night, he has earned his daily wage in honest labor that ranges from professions like teacher/bathroom attendant to a door-to-door bible salesman/fish cleaner and everything in between. Elias continues to work hard, grinding out the words and turning them into literary gems, or if you prefer, literary pearls of wisdom. He lives with his wife, two children and a dog-named Brandon in a suburban area in the vicinity of the great Metropolis known as New York City. There he prepares barbecue dinners for neighbors and friends, roams the area for yard sales, watches flies and other moving insect life die in his backward where he also sits on a metal beach chair deciding on the future of the world as we know it.

Book preview

Hashish Dreaming

Hashish Dreaming

A Novel of Sorts

by

Elias Sassoon

Hashish Dreaming

ISBN: 978-1-312-05151-5

Copyright © 2014 by Elias Sassoon

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or, other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage  or retrieval systems, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of any of the characters to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

First Printing: April 2014

Dedication

To all the individuals down through the human centuries who have bucked every system, every ideology, every government, every rule and regulation to demand absolute freedom of thought and movement for themselves and paid for it with their lives and souls. Each of us living and yet to be born owe you everything.

Table of Contents

Chapter I / Bowling Alley Maybe

Chapter 2 /  Earthly Fortunes Of Earth, Dark Earth

Chapter 3 /  Body Pierced, Blood Pierced

Chapter 4  / Concrete Malls In The Same Sky

Chapter 5 / Reflections Of Things In The Face

Chapter 6  / An Ass, A Hole, A City Center

Chapter 7  / Personal Things Like Coitus Interruptus

Chapter 8 / One God Worshiping And Other Things

Chapter 9 /  Objects Coming Alive, Before The Eyes

Chapter 10 / Time Running, Wasting, We Wasting

Chapter 11 / Examining The Sights of Sounds

Chapter 12 /  Catering Obedience To Disobedience

Chapter 13  / Take The Golfing Shot Across The Intercourse

Chapter 14  / Depressing Thoughts Depressed Against The Temple Of The Mind

Chapter 15  / A World Carried In Your Pocket

Chapter 16  / Barfing Out The Words In A Writer’s Spiel

Chapter 17 / Ideal Dreaming

Chapter 18 /– Sadness At The Coming Of The Lord

Chapter 19 /– Contrasting Breathe And No Breathe

Chapter 20 / Random Access Thoughts (RAT)

Chapter 21  / Historical Analysis Of Historical Details In Historical Retrospective

Chapter 22  / Personal Thoughts Scraped From The Junk Heap Of The Mind

Chapter 23 / Scratch The World Around The Brain

Chapter 24 / Laughing My Way Toward The Artificial

Chapter 25 / On Having Seams And Being Seamless

Chapter 26 / Endings In The Script, Not In The Mind

Chapter 27 / Endings In The Script, Not In The Mind

Chapter 28 / On The Menu Today, Depression Pure And Simple

Chapter 29 / Seeking To Make The Face Famous

Chapter 30 / Pleasantries In Memory In The Mind And Mouth

Chapter 31 / Do You Want Your Religion On A Plate Or In A Sandwich?

Chapter 32 / Epilogue Without An End

HASHISH DREAMING

Chapter I / Bowling Alley Maybe

Here I am, here I be, be to you, you to me, traveling the universe which is something I invented in my own head, moving about in my own head, what am I except in my own head, the head of a dinosaur about to find his goal in life, a life made up of crystalline objects so precious and few. This is life lived at the crossroads of a fallopian tube.

Who am I? Me, I, thou, you, the man next door, who are we, I, You, he, she, it, the dog. Yes, who is that dog, the black one at my feet? Who is the man next door, the one who washes his car and smiles whenever he takes a leak in the Cuarto de banyo which translated means something like a room with a bath? Who is she, his wife, the woman with the bangs, the tall gawky one, the one who looks like some female beast? Pussy, does she have one, the woman. Hate that woman, can’t stand that woman. Can’t stand that man, her husband. They, existing on the material plane of the material, they with their cars and children, their trips to Disney lands of the world, they of the Christmas decorations to their house, the plastic Santa and the Reindeer, they of the artificial lights during the holiday season. Screw them, screw them all. I’m getting real upset by this topic.

Bowling alleys in my mind. The place I recall, the place I would always sit to dream in, within, the place, I remember my goals, becoming famous in the world while the blue collar goofball rolled his game or while the bitch with the wide ass and the pierced clitoris downed her beer and threw her ball. I remember sitting there and dreaming of becoming one of the elite, an elitist, one of the tops, the best, the greatest man on earth, from a bowling alley I dreamed, from the downside of this planet, I dreamed and thought and contemplated. And who cares? Do I care anymore? Who cares anymore?

What am I? Speaking like Socrates or Aristotle or one of those effeminate freaks from 400 B.C. Oh incidentally, the B.C. stands for Before Christ, and who was Christ. Does it matter. Does Jerusalem so long ago matter. Do men’s actions matter? Why? Who cares about the Home sapiens of the world? Why am I on this subject? I mean how the hell did we get to Christ? I mean why is it that living on this part of the sphere we called the Western hemisphere we always get back to Christ, for Christ’s sake.

Africa, I rather get out of this Christ thing and transverse the darker continent. There I am in a jungle that doesn’t exist anymore and I am under a shady tree and I am reading Thoreau or somebody just as stupid. Yes, and there, right there, I lion comes up and he asks me for a bag of corn chips and I delight him with two bags. He thanks me and goes on his way. I am the new king of the Lions. Lions come to me and I provide the fast foods from this point on. From this point on, I shop once a week for the chips, and the cookies and everything else with artificial ingredients that can be found in civilization and take the goodies back to the jungle and feed every hungry lion that ever existed and will ever existed. The only problem is the crumbs, crumbs everywhere dirtying up my jungle floor. Don’t they understand that crumbs bring roaches and various other insects that we cannot deal with in civilized society? What’s the matter with some people and some animals?

Enough of this Africa for a moment. No more shopping for snack foods right now, at least not in the dark continent. Shopping for snack food here, in the local Seven Eleven, quickly in, quickly amongst the crinkling bags. There are foreigners all around me, waiting on me, looking at me while I choose the nachos or the popcorn that I will have with the beer and soda and that I will consume during an important hockey or baseball game on the tube tonight. Consuming the junk food, the snack food, consuming the chips, laying them in the mouth without pleasure just to do something, to have something to do. Always looking to do, to have something to do. Of course, I am like everyone else. I am no different. I am searching to be kept busy, to forget I am a big ass hole who doesn’t deserve his time and place on earth.

Which brings us to making reservations about life, or just making reservations. Should I reserve my place or not? The rich ones they reserve everything that’s why they’re rich. The poor folk like myself, we reserve only our bodies which we give to science as it likes. We are the fools, the maggots who exist for others pleasure. But now I am sounding like Jim Jones and his temple of doom folks. Don’t want to sound like an hysterical slob who can contort the masses. The masses, there’s an interesting concept, like a mob. Is a mob good? Al Capone and folks, good or bad? Let’s think about it, let’s think of all and everyone. A crowd, they cheer, right or wrong? Wrong. Now that’s editorial judgment. I hate crowds personally, and I hate the majority, another judgment. I hate majority rule, I hate minority rule. I dislike despot, I dislike democratically elected officials. I dislike oligarchies and monarchies and all other things that creep along in the night. Dislike.

Now back to the bowling alley where dreams used to be dreams, where I went alone to watch and dream. All ages, bowling, boys and girls, women and children, men of all shapes, sizes and colors. Here a true democracy, here the western world in filial action. Wow. Dreaming here, what a pleasure. Dreaming like a fool, planning like a fool. Planning, a mindless exercise for the mindless.

What do I want to do right now, ever? Nothing. I don’t want to do anything. Should I have to do anything? What would we all be if we wanted to do nothing? We would die, all of, become deceased, wind up as fertilizer used to freshen up the soil so tomatoes could germinate. Speaking of tomatoes, I’ve grown the, the big ones, the small ones, given them away, to anyone and everyone and I’m tired of it. I know it is a requirement, to grow them that is, all of us in suburbia are required to grow them, but I don’t want to. What are you going to do about it? You want to fight me. You’ll lose. I’ll win. I always win. Oh God. Now I’m sounding like a megalomaniac.

I’m not a megalomaniac, I really am not. Actually I am a fool without much confidence. This idiot who has gone out in the world and tried to become what the world wants and never succeeded, at least not to the world.  I’ve always viewed myself as failing the test, failing what anybody wants, failing, failure, being one. What is success, being other than a pissing, eating, copulating, sleeping machine. So what would that make me if I succeeded, a God! A stupid thought, to want to make myself into a God. I’m not even Greek.

Moving on and away, moving to the suburbs where I live, any suburbs in any part of the prosperous world, a world of cement and a controlled environment. Environmentalism, an interesting concept. But who the hell really cares. I don’t. I just want to sit on the couch and eat my bags of chips and not come into contact with other human beings. I don’t like other human beings. I hate other human beings. They’re always making demands, they have these sets of standards and all that bull shit. Who needs it. It’s better to hide away in some dark hole in some suburb of the world where contact with the human element is limited.

Back to the bowling alley and thoughts of grandeur, of becoming a leader of the human element. A writer, one that will change men, move men, make men better. Ridiculous thoughts of a young man in a bowling alley. Change men, improve men. A beast is a beast, a monkey is a monkey, humans are humans and they can be nothing but humans and will always be humans. Face facts everyone. We are doomed.

Chapter 2 /  Earthly Fortunes Of Earth, Dark Earth

Sitting on my freakin’ ass, my big, white, male ass that is a thrusting vehicle during sex with the opposite sex, thrusting toward a sexual coitus or whatever we want to call it, the ass, the driving device in sex, the important device in sitting on a chair, the ass used in sleeping to staple one to the face of the Earth, the Earth, which is the planet we live on. Yes, we live on a planet somewhere in some universe, a planet which is round and drives through space and time. Time something that is governed by a clock which is made by humans which is equivalent to a tree that sheds its leaves on the basis of the amount of sun it gets.

A planet, Earth, rock and dirt, and more dirt and rock, and minerals and rock, and rubble and rock, and organic material and rocks and inorganic material and rocks and fossils and rocks and insects and rocks, and humans and rocks. Waters, Earth, and the fishes and all that crap and natural disasters and all that crap. Men and all that crap. Women and all that crap. Men, are we talking about those with a penis. Not really, we’re talking about the vagina crowd as well. Vagina, penis, men, humans, Homo sapiens and the like living on what is termed Earth. What is Earth. Earth, wind and fire, what is it to me, who the freak cares about me and it, the Earth. Concept that bears only relevance to me when I look at a map or a globe. But I don’t carry around globes with me or maps or any paraphernalia, I do certainly do not. I do not like to carry anything with me except a wallet filled with cash, money, cents, dineros. Carry, I don’t like to be constrained by anything or anyone. Possessions. Travel light, not like at an airport with the frigging suitcases. I hate suitcases, anchors away. I want to just be able to carry myself around and nothing else.

Do I want to carry another human? Do I want to have to be the basis for their existence? Why should I? Don’t want to be burdened. Don’t want to be human and live in human society. Now, this is all becoming my theme song, isn’t it. Me, I, doesn’t like humanity, doesn’t want to be burdened. He, I, is a hermit of the worst kind! So. So. So what? Am I hurting anybody. But is hurting somebody a test of good and bad, greatness and perversity. A rock doesn’t hurt anybody except if wielded by Cain in the Cain and Abel story of times past. Cain and Abel, stories, hurting, being annoyed. Brother against brother. Where am I going with this?

Back to Earth, and does it exist for me or not. Let me say and say truthfully, honestly, with love in my heart, existence a sphere, does a sphere exist, does a planet exist, does it matter to me, does the fact that I live in a country, in anything matter to me.

Miss, Miss I say, I am directing my speech to you dear lady, I hail a passerby on Main Street somewhere. Do you like living on the Earth?

Earth, where is Earth, I know Earth. All I can tell you, Sir, is that my feet hurt today. I’ve worked fourteen hours today, waiting on tables, fourteen. I don’t give a shit about any Earth.:

There you have it hot off the presses, hot and very tasty. The ass hole who works the banks of the Nile collecting the bales of whatever, you think he cares about the sphere, the orbital object. What the hell. Who cares then? Those that manipulate care, they use the preordained concept to prove a point about something or somebody. To us, even if its scientifically provable, who the hell cares.

Earth, moving through something into something else. Evolution, animals evolving, energy evolving. Look at the soil of the Earth. Hard to understand the grains of dirt nourish things. Teaches a lesson. Dirt, ugliness, what are they grooming, what will grow from them. Dirt, humus, loam, peat, top soil, produces what, where. Apply it to the face, to the hands, to the body. Strange thoughts.

Isolated, existing on the planet, so what? What difference does the planet make? It’s a question not an answer. Where is the answer and who is to provide it? Looking at the Earth from above, can we spot the puller of strings, the maneuverer of men and women, ants and mice and men. What can you see when we eye things from above? You can see a sphere, but what if the sphere is a marble and the marble is in the hands of invisible gravity and we are descending towards a bottomless bit that takes billions of years to hit the rock bottom. What if we are in a free fall? What if we are constantly free falling? What if our dead bodies are free falling through an empty hole? What if our ashes are free falling? What if at the end of the free fall in billions of years, there is another hole and there is another billion of years of plummeting towards nothing? And while we’re falling, what of the wasted time? What are we doing during that time? What are we thinking and feeling? Are there books written about the fall and who is writing those books?

Earth, the whole concept is interesting. A ball traveling around other balls. We play with balls a lot, call it baseball and football, and soccer and all that rubbish, we do play with balls and maybe we are playing with the Earth, with the Universe, maybe we are pretending to play with puffed up pigskin and horsehide while in reality we are playing with the realities, juggling them. And towards what end is all this happening.  Think about it, think about the spheres in our lives, the circles, life revolving around in circles, circular paths leading nowhere. Think of the Earth, circular, monotonous, leading nowhere. Rather it be a strange line that keeps extending beyond, to the never ending beyond, always new, always different. What would we play with then? What would our games be then? Line games that never have an end or a winner.

Winning, an idea meaning that there is an end, a circle, coming back and joining again and then a new game, and new circles, and new winning, monotonous like the Earth, just like the spherical attitude of all of us. Monotonous and eventually terribly boring. Ending, but never ending, the Earth, the circle in our minds.

Chapter 3 / Body Pierced, Blood Pierced

Here I am observing my hands, banging away, but really not seeing much of anything. There are the nails, the fingers, the banging away at an electronic keyboard. Am I gaining insight into the whole process? What am I gaining out of it? I’m asking you and demanding you tell me. I want to really understand the process of finger movement across the keyboard. It really is important to me, terrible.

What, are we going to do the science thing again? Put my fingers under an electronic microscope and observe the capillaries. What will the capillaries say. Blood pulsating, we will see the blood pulsating through veins, maybe. Guess so. Blood movement. We will see muscles and tendons, we will see part of the process. The process is complex. Must we see the process? Must we see the electric current going through the wires? Must we understand the principles of electricity to enjoy the light bulb or the electronic device that is sparked by the current? Tell me, you tell me, what not tell me, I want my fingers to tell me. But my brain must also tell me, because my brain is directing my fingers, the cells in my brain, the parts of my brain and the cells are directing the impulses, the blood, the muscles. A process, it is a large one.

Looking at my fingers, at the world of my fingers and the sensations of my fingers and the ideas that went into making my fingers act and exist. I was a kid when I first began understanding the wealth of my fingers. I played games with them, made them into independent men and women and had fights with them. I lay in bed and had my fingers climb mountains and scale the highest obstacles that man ever invented. And my fingers were gallant, always brave. So looking at my fingers now, I take pride. Looking at them, the nails, the cells, eye them, the supple forms, the arching graciousness. I love them, they love me. End of story, story of my fingers. But what of the other parts.

Brain, heart, liver, pancreas, cells, single cells, multiple cells, billions of cells, trillions of cells and what are they doing; they don’t think, they don’t analyze, or do they? Is there that instinctive intelligence? Scientists can always provide me with the scientific answers, always. But I don’t want the science here. I want the imaginative responses. That is what I am seeking.

Cells, are they watching me now. Are the cells in my ear, are they watching me now. Am I being watched by all of them. Are they deciding whether to work as we speak. Are they talking to one another and making a decision. Should they stop working all at once in my chest and give me death by heart disease, liver disease, pancreas disease. Should they contort and give me arthritis or just decay and give me some blindness.

Working, the working of cells through a body like the working of circuits through man-made devices. See it all, feel it all. Live to the fullest, highest, farthest. See everything and everything should be seen and experienced. But to what end, to what. To understand to what end? What is the end of perceiving the cells that are not perceptible to the naked eye? Endings, like the endings of time, time moving to a conclusion while perception continues beyond time.

Blood flow. Imagine the red in a sea, swishing downhill, passing landmarks along the way. It’s like a fantastic voyage of supernatural fame. There inside, on a raft of pine, going down, down, down on the stream of blood, feeling the heat of the blood, seeing the stream become rivers and then flood the mainland. Blood, everywhere, washing the land, bathing it, making it fertile again, blood, the smell so distinct yet not so distinct. Blood clotting along decaying remains. Visions of blood wrapped around cells, cells swaying in the breezes of breath. Visions of all in the blood as I go downstream. Trying to fathom what it means, what I mean. Visions why can’t I have visions of these things, why can’t I have visions when I am out on the street with my fellow man, why not, why am I not in the bloodstream moving down, to the end of it all, watching the cells bath, watching life as it purifies and putrefies. It is a good question for me.

So what am I going on about. Seeing the physical realities of things and understanding the physical realities. Not just accepting things or going along with things. Trying to decipher the process so that I can truly live my life and know that I am living. Sound strange. Maybe. I sound strange. But what is strange anyway except something that is hidden. Something that is hidden is strange. What is strange is something that is hidden.

Hospital. Ideas thereof.  Hands, visions thereof. Hands, arms, knives, gowns, body at the ready, bodies in the morgue. Families of bodies. Bodies being cut open and closed, bodies being closed and clothed. The world of the physical is complete. The spiritual, the internal, what cannot be seen, not here, at least not the perception. Perception of reality is the smell, a smell of wine and roses guns and ammunition, dentists offices turned sinister. The body and the tiles on the wall. Perception of the reality. And the lights, dimming, dimmer, and the nurses, dark, bulky creatures, walking back and forth and waiting for some end, their end, my end, your end, the end of time. Women, waiting, bulky in white uniforms waiting for the end. Bodies, movement of bodies, and with the bodies thinking of the cemeteries where the bodies go to decay under headstones. Bodies in the ground, under covers, bodies in boxes, bodies lifted, bodied lowered. I, me, you, everyone, crying over the bodies,