President Trump and Harry the Human meet!

Yesterday I was walking through the desert behind my cozy shelter in Pearblossom when Betty the Coyote Creator Goddess greeted me from atop a medium sized boulder.

Greetings, Harry!  Betty called, Where are you headed?

Hello Betty.  I'm just wandering around, looking for inspiration to get through another day. The smoke over the mountains from the Los Angeles fires has not helped.

Yes, the fires are adding to the pressure that's building throughout the biome.  On top of everything, it seems one of your big human wars is about to break out.  Plus ça change....

Betty, that's a cliche- tell me something I don't know.

That's a cliche too, Harry.

Here we are playing word games on the cusp of apocalypse.

Right, huh?  Listen, Harry, I have the perfect distraction from the realistic magic you humans have to deal with.

Realistic magic?

That's what I call the other side of the magical realism you long for. In the current stage of your evolution you face magical realism’s opposite, realistic magic, where the magic is so well disguised it doesn't look like magic.

Hmm...Betty, what sort of distraction did you have in mind?

Then I noticed a small red pouch held delicately in her glowing teeth (she and I communicate telepathically).

What's in your mouth, Betty?

It's ayahuasca.  Heard of it?

It's like LSD, right?

The difference is that a human chemist invented LSD in 1938, while Ayahuasca was invented by the gods of the Amazon in a time of their own making. You can imagine it has certain properties beyond the LSD experience.

So you propose I have an ayahuasca trip with you in the desert?

I have a different idea.  First, take this pouch out of my mouth and remove the contents.

I did as instructed, removing a small, pliable purplish pellet.

Eat it, commanded the Trickster Goddess.  I complied. It tasted like stale gum.

We began to stroll across the desert, Betty leading the way.  After a time the ayahuasca kicked in with the usual stuff: a sharpening of colors, a lessening of the boundaries between things, a freeing of the mind from conventional connections, conclusions, assumptions.  The morning was cool and still. 

Betty, this would be an adequate LSD trip, but I'm not sure what's particular about ayahuasca.

Harry, this substance was designed by the gods to make certain types of communication possible, when it pleased the gods that humans engage in it.

What kind of communication?

As I asked this, we rounded a dune to behold a bowl shaped depression, at the center of which was a swirling, shimmering....

It's a mini-black hole, Betty explained.

Yeah?  Did you put it there?

No, it predates me.  The ayahuasca helps you see it.

Let me guess, we're going to jump into it.

Close, you are going to jump into it.

Maybe thanks to the ayahuasca I felt no dread.  It seemed a logical and very human thing to want to jump into that hole, though I had some concerns.

If I jump, then what?  Where will I be?  Will I be stuck there?

You will meet your counterpart, your negative, the antithesis of you.  

Wait, you mean I'm going to Kurt Vonnegut's.....

Yes, to the Infandibulum, where paradoxes find true love.

And getting back....?

I'll come for you at the appropriate time. Ok Harry, jump when ready!

I couldn't think of anything else I was ready to do, so I did a little hop and just glided into the thing and popped right out, re-dressed in a clean flannel shirt and jeans, seated at a picnic table across from the new (for the second time) President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, dressed in a white polo shirt and slacks, beside his Mar-a-Lago golf course.

He studied me quietly, no sign of alarm.  I felt the need to speak first.

Mr. President, I'm sorry for this intrusion.  I don't exactly understand what's happening....

No worries, I'm not sure either.  I took some stuff, aya...something....

Ayahuasca?

Yes!  Bob gave it to me.  Do you know Bob? He's supposed to give me a "newly coherent vision"- which he's certainly doing! I'm almost ready to scrap tariffs on Brazil for this stuff!

No, I don't know anyone here.  Would you like me to leave?

No, I was expecting you.  Before I took the aya...whatever, Bob told me I would be visited by someone who would give me great new perspectives.  As I launch my historic second term, this is actually a good time for some insights, if you have any. We're more or less on top of things, but it gets intense and who knows what might help.  

I understand, Mr.....shall I call you Mr. President?

Call me Don.  Who are you?

Harry, aka Harry the Human.  I'm a mind reader.  In my youth, in the hippy 60's, I did performances in the Haight.

A hippy! I've always wanted to talk to a hippy!  What is it with you guys?

Hmm?

I mean, you don't give a shit that you live in a fantasy?  That all your ideas about things are from another planet?  The "peace and love" planet?  The "We are one" planet? Guess what, Harry- we don't live on that planet!

Well put, Don.  That's a good description of the situation.  But which is worse, finding that your ideas about life are fantasy based, or accepting reality, day in, day out, with no escape?

Touché, Harry.  Honestly, sometimes I don't know why the hell I'm doing this.  It was exciting at first, just to be able to show people I'm not a dummy, that I'm actually smarter than they are, and now they know it...very exciting, but the shit here doesn't stop.

Don, I have to confess I've written things about you that you might not like.

Such as?

Well, I wrote that you fulfilled a prophecy in the biblical story of the Tower of Babel [see The Babel of Trump Tower below].

Yeah?  That's when God got angry and made it so everyone speaks different languages?

Yes, like now, when it seems like people can't communicate.

And that's supposed to be my fault? 

He looked at me quietly, and I realized I was speaking directly with his subconscious (as we presumptuously call it). The gods put into ayahuasca the ability for mind to mind, soul to soul contact.  It seemed safe enough. The parties do their business, then each withdraws, back through the black hole, back to normalcy.

I tried to soothe him.

Don, I understand your frustrations about life, even when you're victorious. We get worked up about defeating things that make our lives hard. We may defeat those things, but it's still the same fucking life.

Damn right, Harry!  It's the same fucking life!

People will kick you when you're up as well as down!

Right again, Harry the Human!  I can tell you've been around the block a few times.

Don, I've got to ask, and feel free to decline, but this seems like a safe place....

Go ahead, Harry.  I find this therapeutic.

Well, I've written about the military industrial complex, which was President Eisenhower's concept.  Remember him?

Yes, we were little boys....

We mused quietly for a bit.  Don continued:

Of course I've heard of the military industrial complex.  It's a lefty idea.

Well, sometimes it's a right wing idea too.

Yeah?

The military industrial complex is all the private interests that make money off war and preparation for war, and the government defense agencies that make policy.  

Yeah, sure, what about them?  Wonderful people, by the way.  

I'm sure many are, but Eisenhower saw a potential for collusion between profits and policy.  I should note, I've added the media to Eisenhower's phrase, since it has become an extension of war policy.

The media!  I showed those cocksuckers!  

They did not see you coming.  Do you read the New Yorker?

Sometimes my people show me stuff.

Boy do they hate you.  

Yeah, because I'm not a Kennedy, all polished and patrician, or Obama! Did you see at Jimmy Carter's funeral when Obama sat next to me and I made him smile, made him do nicey-nice with me? OMG, once you're on top it's so easy to embarrass these guys!  

Don, how the hell do you know the word "patrician"?

Don laughed.  If you couldn't tell, the ayahuasca was loosening us up.  I felt the need to get back to serious discussion points.

Anyway, Don, back to the military media industrial complex, how do you get along with those guys? Do they accept you on their turf? After all, you're a real estate guy.

Harry, I just follow the news like everybody else, and I see when a story gets weak.  It gets weak when things take too long to happen, like in a bad story that puts people to sleep. We learned about this in 9th grade! Remember high school English?

Don, I taught high school English!

No shit! You don't seem like that.

Like what?

Like a high school English teacher.

Those were my formative years, before I became what I am today.

Which is?

I told you, Don, I'm a retired mind reader.

Oh yeah...anyway, as you know, a story is supposed to have a beginning, then comes rising action, like a terrorist attack or a big argument about abortion or oil or something. Harry, I guess I don't have to tell you the last part.

You do not, Don- it's the resolution, which is supposed to resolve (from Latin, "to solve") the stresses of the story. I think I know what you're saying: All we have is the first two parts: intro and rising action- we never have resolution. Nothing ever ends or is resolved. But as for putting everyone to sleep...sometimes I like going to sleep.

Sure, Harry, but don't you like to wake up too?  And when you wake up, don't you want things to happen? The military, etc. complex was spinning the same stories over and over, about communists...terrorists...North Korean nukes- on and on, and nothing ever happened.  Generations passed, and nothing happened.  No resolution- no story. People get tired of that, of endless anxiety about how stories will resolve, or if they will.

I had an epiphany, like a bolt of lightning.  

Don, I know why Betty did this....

Did what?  Who's Betty?

Sorry, The Coyote Creator Goddess.  She's at my end.  She hooked us up because we have something in common, which is that we both want something to happen.  We want different things to happen, though.

What do you want?

I want the predatory circus we call life to develop a sort of overall consciousness, to escape what the Hindus call the circle of life.

Escape the circle of life?  You mean kill yourself?

No.  The circle of life is not a good thing. You need to get out of it, actually, to live.

What's wrong with the circle of life?

What's wrong is that it's a circle.  It goes around and around- birth, life, death- doing the same things over and over, with no point, no...achievement.

No achievement?

If you sign a peace treaty, it's just the prelude to the next war.  Endless war...endless....

Harry, is this what a hippy is, someone who doesn't like war?

Well, that's part of it.  There's also a large dose of hedonism.

Pleasure loving!  

Yes, that's why hippies don't like war, because it hurts.

I guess they're right about that.  And I'm with you on pleasure.  Who are these people who oppose my pleasure?  Do they hate pleasure?

You can hate anything, Don.  If I may return to the military media industrial complex: It seems like they didn't see you coming.

No, but a few have been surprised by my abilities, and we are meshing nicely.

There will be losers.

Of course, there are always losers.

Have you ever been a loser, Don?

Yes.  It hurts.

It does.  What if there were a way to "win," but not like the zero-sum model, where you only win if someone else loses.  Listen, Don, hedonism, in my view, entails empathy.  In other words, the pleasure is greater if it's being shared and you are loved.  That's the ultimate hedonism.  Do you follow me?

Harry, I'm not dumb!  Of course I follow you!

Sorry.

No problem.  If I make a million dollars on a deal, someone else does not make that million, only I do.  If I become president, someone else doesn't.

Yes, Don, of course.  That's the process in the real world.  But Betty the Coyote Goddess told me we are governed by realistic magic, so more things are possible than meet the eye.  Look at the two things we have in common: we both want something to happen, and we're both hedonists.  Surely these two things could merge somehow into a wiser and more farsighted type of government policy.  That's the magic I'm talking about!

That would be some magic!  

I can't believe we're agreeing on something!  This is the most far-out trip ever!