XXIV. Apollo Never Sets

I slowly draw myself up from my bed, drool hanging on my lip as if it believes it is a permanent resident. My head pounds with the memory of the one-too-many tequila shots from the night before. Making my way to the bathroom, I notice that my clothes and, strangley, my dignity have been stripped during the night.I cleanse myself in the bedee, taking long drawn-out sips of indiscretion and day old water that has taken on a yellowish tint. “Weird,” I think to myself, “it doesn’t taste like lemonade.”

I stand, and gaze out the window (perhaps searching for my dignity). From my downtown Washington, DC apartment, a number of provocative neon signs are visible, silently reciting themselves like lines from a hot, jerky poem. Above the entrance to the Zips Cleaners, for example, there flashes the phrase LIVE GIRLS, LIVE GIRLS, LIVE GIRLS, a sentiment that never fails to bring me joy, especially when I consider the alternative.

As I a notice another sign, less jubilant, though more profound, that reads simply ALTERATIONS, my mind wanders to thoughts of my adventurous partner-in-crime Apollo Creed. Normally, I am weary of a man interested in people and shoeshines (especially people), but in his case we'll make an exception. It always reminds me of Apollo-not merely because Apollo is a leading authority on the experiential aspects of mind-altering plants, or because his wondrous stories have altered my own thinking, but because Apollo, perhaps more than anyone else in our culture, has the ability to let out the waist on the trousers of perception and raise the hemline of reality.

Scholar, theoretician, explorer, dreamer, pioneer, fanatic, and spellbinder, as well as ontological tailor, Creed combines an erudite, if somewhat original, overview of history with a genuinely visionary approach to the millennium. The result is a cyclone of unorthodox ideas capable of lifting almost any brain out of its cognitive Kansas. When Hurricane Apollo sets one's mind back down, however, one will find that it is on solid ground; for, far from Oz-built, the theories and speculations of Creed are rooted in a time-tested pragmatism thousands of years old. Many of his notions astonish us not because they are so new, but because they have been so long forgotten.

So let us, one and all, salute this visionary and his mission.

The flying saucer is warming up its linguistic engines. The mushroom is shoving its broadcasting transmitter through the forest door. Time for the monkeys to move into hyperspace! It's going to be a weird, wild trip, but, guided by the archaic, Gaia-given gyroscope, we can commence the journey in a state of excitement and hope. With his uniquely secular brand of eschatological euphoria, Apollo Creed is inviting us to a Doomsday we can live with. Be there or be square.