Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest

Vienna. I almost lost my passport here. The Polish conductor found it in my compartment and I was saved a heart seizure. The old Hapsburg capital was fuck'n expensive. I got the privilege of sleeping on the floor of the shrine-room with no access to a shower at one of the Grand Wizard's hangouts. The fact that it was all nothing wasn't his fault. It's just that the Austrians, especially the Viennese have got to be the biggest cheapskates on the planet. There was an empty and unfriendly feeling to it all. Vienna had no soul. It was a super-efficient corporate diplomatic transportation hub, but it reminded me of a huge head without a body. The old empire was gone. Vienna was now a city-state, a weird and huge museum. The Hapsburgs, Mozart, Hayden, Beethoven, Schubert, Mahler, Freud, and Hitler had all left their mark in this super-heated hotel of strange inclinations. It was here that I got the crazy idea to actually try to get to Bulgaria through what was left of Yugoslavia. It was cheap and fast. Going through Rumania would take forever. The American embassy told me to keep away from the dirty Serbs. I went to their embassy anyway. It was a mob scene. But I got a transit visa within twenty-four hours. The Serbs looked at me as some strange curiosity. I also struck a homer with the Jordanians. They painlessly gave me a visa too. The whole nightmare with the Indians in Prague seemed like a bad joke.

I played cat and mouse with the Viennese subway dogs. I got caught once, but they let me go. Rain and dark skies clouded all my days. I visited Freud's house. It was a rip-off. But I paid the six bucks. "You Americans are very strange," said the young curator. "If it costs too much, you won't pay, even if you came a long way to see something." I was amused. "Well, for Freud, I'll do it, but don't test my patience," I retorted in a mock huff. I was allowed to photograph anything I wanted. Freud's house was filled with gloomy despair. Freud seemed to be indifferent to life in his final years. He was waiting for death to take him. The old guy knew that his old world was on the brink of extinction. Freud had focused only on the sex chakra and couldn't go beyond that. Freud understood BLACK STRESS and buried his head in the sand. Jung split with him and went for the higher crown chakra. Both of these cats lost their nerve. Ah, there was no heart in this town. There was just a lot of mindstuff hiding a lot of fear. I felt Summer every day and this made me warm. I sent her some postcards to let her know she wasn't forgotten.

Vienna. A city of anal-retentive merchants. A hollow feeling dogged me in this greedy town. Everything was expensive and people were polite, too polite. Stupid foreigners were an inconvenience in this city of commercial robots. Vienna was an impressive consumption machine with matching propaganda. My favorite grocery store was called CONSUM with an infinity sign. What would old Franz Yosef think about all this manic abuse? I visited his royal doghouse. The old fart had impeccable timing. He died just as the Second Wave was pushing at the gates of his crumbling world. The vortex was on the verge of exploding and the old heavy and subtle black stress of his kingdom could not contain it. It was BEE BOP, BEE BOP, WHITE STRESS!
I visited the house of Vienna's prince of WHITE STRESS. It was pretty cool too. The Saraswati puja was a hit with Mozart and the locals. We rocked all night. I felt a blissful rush up the spine. It was my offering to Austria. The curators were mystified at the sight of this weirdo sitting in a lotus position mumbling away nonsense while his eyes were closed. Wild complexities were envisioned on this improvised hitchhike.

Asteroids as seen from Vienna:
About two thousand of these minor planetary critters have been spotted with vague clues of another two thousand more. These vermin of the skies like to streak through time exposures while picking at their food. These strange creatures are not shattered planets, but rather stillborn ones. The conditions for miscarriage in our solar system are always strong. Most asteroids orbit between Mars and Jupiter, but some are perturbed into eccentric orbits that intersect Earth. Of these, a tiny sprite named Eros could well contribute to the lonely scenery on Earth just beneath the clouds. Eros, measuring about 7 by 19 by 30 kilometers, would be incredibly destructive over a considerable area and might well cause major changes. If Eros decides to head our way, we will have about six months to get ready.

Vienna as seen from Eros:
A little young Slovak woman has just come back from Tibet with news that the kid there might just be the ONE. Yeah, she's a close friend of the Grand Wizard and she seems a little sexually confused. She has now befriended the strange American sleeping on the shrine-room floor and sparked in him this insane idea of visiting the kid with a Chinese visa that must be then bought, stolen, or borrowed just outside Kathmandu. The young little Slovak has taken a liking to a photograph of the Nakpa which in due course will be surrendered to her. The American will receive an unexpected kiss on the mouth. An incredible simper on his face will coyly wait for the right moment to board the vortex train.
I boarded the train and arrived in Bratislava, the capital of the newly independent kingdom of Slovakia, within the short space of an hour. The day was wet and overcast. Dinky little Bratislava! A cute little town with a cute little Hrad, and a cute little Stare Mesto, and very friendly people. The Slovaks were moving fast in the great race to prop up smart little stores in the Brave New Eastern Europe. The Slovak babes were great to look at and the Slovaks, in general, seemed to exude more confidence than their ex-brother Czechs. I felt no hard feelings for the split. Some nice girls told the stranger that the economy was worse now and that the Prime Minister was a jerk. I saw a mother goddess statue and lovely crown jewels seemingly from an evil dream on display at the Hrad. Little Bratislava was still not really ready for tourists. "Oh, they're still cleaning up the place," said one of the girls. "This town used to look like it still hadn't been renovated since the last war." I smiled and fell through a hole in the old quarter. The wooden scaffolds were hard to see in the dark. It was quite a fandango finding cheap lodgings for the night.

Bratislava had been nothing but a quick afterthought. It was raining and I had no map of the city. The learning curve to get around was tough. Nothing prepared me for Devin, a ruined castle on top of a sorcerer's mountain. It was a power-spot, a tiny vortex where two mighty rivers converged. It had been the old border during the bad old days, but now it was a mere fading memory. Devin was shrouded in mist the day of my visit. An air of magical mystery cloaked the Slovak landscape. Many had fought and died for this hill. I did my puja for Slovakia here. The spirits writhed and shaked around like lanky and lonely clowns in their mad-rush to gulp up the blessings. I could feel Summer grinning a long hat-brim smile. This was HER PLACE. Our karma was heavy here. I looked down a grotesquely deep well. I dropped a pebble and waited for the sound of its splash. It took awhile! I wondered aloud how deep one had to go inside before seeing one's folly. One's ignorance. Before hearing the clang of liberation. How far did one have to fall before finally surrendering to the higher wisdom found in some mysterious pocket of the Universe. I made a vow to bring Summer here. It felt right.
I bumped into a Slovak professor of American literature who was intrigued by my writing. We lost each other and never exchanged addresses. I was in a hurry to get on the vortex train. A young Slovak who helped me with my load and even paid an extra fee demanded by the conductor got an instant dharma talk as our train hurled its way to Budapest. Devin lingered in my mind. I listened to Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" on my Walkman. Yes, the guides had taken me to the right place.

Comets as seen from Devin:
Comets are relics of solar history. They left our region billions of years ago and have been in cold storage ever since. When a comet returns, it comes from the past, a fragment of primeval stuff. The appearance of comets has caused great turmoil and alarm among the inhabitants of this planet. There is some hilarious irony here as the inhabitants of this strange and lonely planet share much more with comets, chemically speaking, than with the earth itself. Most living things are made up mostly of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen, the stuff of comets. Like sassy children who throw stones over a rickety fence, comets project a vision. Only damn fools pay no attention to this vision. It's the big Bop!

The Vision:
Budapest. A city of hustlers and manic consumption. I arrived late at night and my host didn't even bother to pick me up at the train station. I had to haggle and curse with demon taxi drivers demanding big bucks and sniffing for dollars. Hungarian money was huge and rainbow-colored, hiding its basic worthlessness. "Change money! Change money!" my cabby hissed into my ear, as he dumped me in front of Bela's apartment. Bela was a big fan of the Grand Wizard and he cautiously toed the party line. His practice seemed lax and he wasn't particularly generous with food or anything else. "Dead Can Dance" played on his stereo twenty-four hours a day as he huffed and puffed in his bedroom with a new woman every night. A picture of the little kid's previous incarnation caught fire in my room during a puja, warning me about the nature of the Hungarian mind.

The Hungarian sangah was into sex, booze, and tobacco. I noticed Bela was the elder statesman of the lot. Most of the Hungarian kids were twenty-somethings with embarrassing names like Attila. There was one interesting couple who were serious practitioners, but were uncomfortably caught up in the GrandWizard's orbit. The male had top-notch motivation, but was convinced the kid in Tibet was a fraud. Compassion needs wisdom, I always say and if you tell a fool he's acting like a fool, than that's showing real care and concern. I told my new friend to keep an open mind. His girlfriend was a little pissed off, but I didn't really mind. Ah, yes! The Hungarians, the true Eurasians! The women look gorgeous, white and European-looking with slanted Asian features. The Hungarian tongue is terribly pleasing to the ear. It sounds like some kind of Mongolian-Turkish babble with Italian intonation. Like little birds singing in the early hours of the morning.

There seemed to be a connection between Summer and the kid in Tibet. I saw this clearly in the pujas. Summer already had a connection with the nakpa and the Tibetan heavy she saw on my altar. This heavy dude's latest incarnation was now three years old and waiting for me in India. There was no conflict about who this KID was. I had a strange dream about seeing a fish with sharp teeth who could talk. He needed plenty of water to swim in. This fish made for quite a nice pet. I started developing my film. Summer was a winner in most of my snaps. I began creating little albums and treated them like prayer-books. They had a lot of energy. It was important to tap it.

I visited the BUDDHA part of the city. Endless tunnels honey-combed the insides of BUDDHA mountain. A pushy and sassy Hungarian chick guided me through the maze and offered instant commentary. It was a gory introduction to Hungary's past. It was a pocket snapshot of the hell realms. Wax figures twisting in fiendish torture chambers competed with hacked-up bodies piled up in neat little mounds. The Christians had sent the pagans packing. There was even a wax figure of a Hungarian macho-man named Miklosh. He was known to all Hungarian kids and Bela seemed to find pleasure in emulating him. Bela's life-style was wearing thin with me. I felt a growing dissonance with his antics. Bela was pissing away his sexual energy after each prostration boost. He wanted to have his cake and eat it too. This was possible, if you had the right training, but Bela wasn't aware of this. Also loyalty to a consort was pretty important and I had long lost count of Bela's conquests. Bela was turning his practice into a boring bedroom farce.

Venus as seen from Budapest:
Venus invites Earth creatures to brood. She is our sister, yet so alien and with a heavy atmosphere. The crushing air of Venus has no oxygen, yet is laced with a corrosive acid-like rain. The acid clouds drive around the planet once every four days. Venus is a killer planet. Its temperature is hotter than a cleaning oven. Its surface is baby-smooth with no mountains for they would crumble like sand castles in this hot corrosive atmosphere. Life of any sort is unimaginable. Like a broken stick, a floppy doll, a bag of bones, a maniac was heard screaming next to the hash joint.

At the hash joint:
I bused over to Rekozeturi cemetery to make an offering to Hungary. 1956, a misunderstood year in Hungary. The martyrs' graves were all bundled up in a back lot far away from the entrance. The Commies had hidden the bodies in unmarked graves. Now all the heroes had special red, green, and white ribbons celebrating their intense earthly desires. Confused and ignorant kids were brought in by the busload. Bored guards shooed me away. This was only for Hungarians. It was a sad and private party. Imre Nagy got a candle. I sent blessings to Summer and all the martyrs.
I wanted to see the old Budapest synagogue. It made me sad to see the old cryptic displays of a faded Jewish aristocracy. A copy of the final solution screamed at me through a glass wall. The Black Demons had even targeted Jews in Greenland! Theodore Herzel's house was nearby. The postcards were expensive. I wanted to stay an extra day, but Bela was an inflexible ass. He took me to Kaleti station where I boarded my train to Sofia. The consumerist disconnection of Hungary was about to be replaced by the intense war connection of Yugoslavia. I was going to the hell realms. The train started to move.

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