SMITH VS. THE LIZARD POLICE

SMITH VS. THE LIZARD POLICE

You should always be aware. You never know when something’s gonna sneak up, some bit of reality.

“Why does everything seem to happen *all at once*?”

Because time doesn’t work right. Time’s variable. Sometimes it’s slow, sometimes it’s fast, sometimes it disappears, sometimes it waits around forever. And sometimes it just doesn’t work right. It’s too complicated to get all the bits and pieces dancing in the same way all at the right time. Sometimes there are glitches.

I watch the pattern. And it’s easy to see rends, flaws and specks in the pattern. Everything has its own logic. Sometimes not all things belong that one can see.

“What kind of flaws have you seen?”

It still pisses me off, but I still miss a scene in Citizen Kane. I read it was a famous scene because they couldn’t afford a train for the movie. They cut out a cardboard train and moved it front of a spotlight, so you see a shadow pull up on the scene. Then I think calendar pages start tearing themselves off to show the passage of time.

Anyway I read about it, then I got to see the movie in Baltimore in the 70s. And I saw the scene. But when I bought the movie in the 90s, it wasn’t there. And I’ve talked to people about it and researched it, and evidently it doesn’t exist.

Sometimes I think you go to sleep in one reality and there’s a glitch and you wake up in an alternate reality. Some mornings the glasses that fit the face I went to bed with don’t fit the face I wake with.

“Ah, the Case of the Changed Face!”

Yes, the Case of the Changed Face. There are just glitches. It’s hard for them to weave all these lies together just right, so sometimes you catch them at it. Keep your eyes open.

“Well, that would make sense. If you’re proficient at movies even to the point of having reviewed them for a paper. If *you* say something’s missing, I believe you. I mean it’s easier for them to fuck with memories but famous movies – there’s something wrong in the programming.”

Well maybe that was in the movie I saw, but I didn’t wake up right in the same slipstream. It’s entirely possible. A lot of people theorize there’re an infinite number of realities coexisting. And I can see events in one altering events in another. It’s like that butterfly breaking dishes in the china shop.

“Ah, that metaphor must be from another reality.”

Anyway, you gotta keep your eyes open because they change things on ya. Gotta be nimble, pliable. And most of all, you have to have a sense of humor!

Get them to laugh along with you, sometimes they leave you alone for awhile, the Fates.

“Hm. That picture on your computer screen — didn’t you use it already for a blog?”

Nope. Never did.

“That’s weird. That must have been from another reality. Seems the realities are getting turbulent. Remember when you thought we got that cookie from a different shop but in my reality it was the right shop? We’d better keep an eye on each other, see that we don’t disappear.”

Oh, oh.

“We can tie each other together at night. That way they can’t change us as easily in our sleep.”

I get to tie you up first.

“There’ve gotta be more glitches than just memory and film. There’s gotta be weird psychedelic shit too.”

That’s the only way we catalog it. Is in our memory. Besides, sometimes you catch one of these glitches but you can’t process it immediately. By the time you do all that you have is your memory to deal with it.

This is weird. Back in my serious drinking days I was staggering up from the train under Tower City before they turned it into a shopping mall. I looked into where they were constructing it. And I saw two policeman beating a person with their clubs.

“Oh God.”

And the policemen, from waist up, were lizard-like. So I tried to sneak around for a better look. And they caught me and they escorted me out of the building. So I called Beth Wolfe and told her I was going back in, just in case I didn’t go back out.

And I went back in, and hid behind one of the potted plants to watch what was going on. And they found me and took me back outside and told me to please go away, or they would arrest me. So I went away.

“So the lizard police took you out again?”

Oh, they changed to human then. See, while they were beating this guy their enjoyment got to them, and they lost control of holding their human form, and I could see their lizard essence shining through. They had long shiny tongues.

So that could be a clue.

“How do you know you weren’t hallucinating?”

I don’t think I’ve ever had alcoholic hallucinations. But I was seriously drunk. See, that’s the trouble with all these glitches and clues. There’s always just that little bit of self-doubt. *Did I really see that?*

Actually I started doubting something that did happen. I asked Wilcox if it were true, and Wilcox said it was. He, Masumi and I were in the theatre watching Fire Starter and in the scene where all the federal agents pull up outside the farm and she starts setting everything on fire with her mind.. the film burned. Guess it got caught on the projector, got caught up, and you could see the film melt, dissolve. So they gave us free passes for the next showing.

I was beginning to doubt that, because that’s too perfect. The movie burning during the fire scene of Firestarter? It’s really easy to doubt yourself if somebody doesn’t reinforce you.

The lizards were the weirdest physical thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen my future first wife’s face turn from one hideous sea creature monster into another endlessly. Just morphing into endless hideous faces. But I was on LSD at the time. So there’s a serious chance that that wasn’t a glitch. Although when I was having sex with her, I hallucinated being in an endless dragon tunnel. But that was enjoyable.

“That’s very strange, Smith.”

What’s strange about it?

“It seems familiar, but not of this planet. I think you do not belong…”

I may have wandered off Reality.

“I think we’re both fringe reality folk. People don’t realize it, but Reality has mesas and dropoffs, frayed edges.”

That’s interesting, because you can reweave these frays into slightly different ways of being.

“Yeah, I enjoy applying visualizations, metaphors to rend a meaning of my current context. I never forsaw this plateau, though. It’s like I was crawling below sea level, and now I’m on a mountain top.”