LANGUAGE
OF THE LIVER+
the
saga of Billy the Kid
Kid:
Inspiration comes. Let it. Let's consider those airports, Alias.
Alias:
How's that? Airports? What the fuck is an airport, Orphan?
Kid:
Such places are one day in the future to be places of public
convenience and
necessity to be shared and enjoyed by all people, and
their friends, and associates,
and loved ones- where free people will
one day gather to travel by air above the
clouds. It is a human urge
to travel and a fine endeavor of friendship to share in it.
(Billy
waves to nobody) 'Bon Voyage'! (Alias is bewildered)
Throughout
the following exchange Alias will just barely keep under wraps her
opinion that Billy is a lunatic and go along, instead, with his
sparkling insight.
Alias:
What is your p-p-point, Kid?
Kid:
As a people, we will have given that place over to terrorists. It's
time we take it
back as our own, is m' point. Hell, what are we
afraid of? Just announce that it is now
an open, public place again
where free people assemble peaceably for a quite normal
purpose and
no guns are wanted; nor are they required. Is a life absent risk a
tolerable life?
Is it not obvious that life insists upon it? Risk, that is? We need
to be
more afraid o' fear than o' terrorists, is m' point. Otherwise,
we shrink. Shrink
enough...and, well, you become a ghost of what was
once a person.
Alias:
Surely, Kid, you realize that people will not ask that kinda tough
question?
What
am I afraid of? And that kind of high standard, man, that shit's
for all the
masters of all the times, not for an ordinary man at all.
Kid:
They said that of air travel, too, Alias, but it will happen and will
be open to
ordinary mortals, like you and me, before long, I
bet.
Alias:
(shaking her head) People will not understand.
Kid:
I know your meaning and it is fake. (Alias is taken aback in a
shudder) A master
is a master only because ordinary people recognized
them as such... by their speech.
Takes one to know one. You must
understand that the world remains what it is so
you (pointing to
Alias) will inspire yourself!
Alias jumps, then pauses, and considers. She walks
about, in a meditative state, under a spot light; the Kid continues.
Kid:
In my own time, it has been the practice to turn over to the Army the
task of
dealing with the Red Man. The common settlers did that and
look what happened?
There was one policy: make the red man change and
be like us. Period. When I assign
my individual stance as a human
being toward another human being to a trained and
armed battery of
soldiers, I smash the hope even of friendship. Love and tolerance fly
out the window. I disgrace another, different from me, when I insist
his way must be
replaced
by my own. You may think me naïve or blind, or both; but, if so, I
know you
are. When are you going to decide to inspire yourself?
Alias:
Uuhh. You did... ask that already... I recal...I do not know
how...wher...to begin
Kid:
It's a very important personal decision to assume full
responsibility to inspire
yourself. I am inspired now to love you as
you are before it's too late; an' it's awkward
and
tacky...dirty even...that's it! My name is to be Dirty
Bill!...made from dirt...that's
me... and finally, it's
beautiful. Dirty Bill. (smiles)
Alias
(winks her delight) Takes one to know one, Dirty Billy! (both laugh
and poke
fun before proceeding)
Dirty
Billy: Alias, it troubles my heart that some fool politicians claim
they represent
the people, all the people of their district, and that
they do what they do in the name
of all the people. I say, then, if a
man does choose politics as a career he is bound to do
the right
thing and represent every individual, leaving nobody out in the cold.
Know
what I mean?
Alias:
Yes, I do, but, how can anybody represent
everybody else?
Dirty
Billy: The language it takes to serve everybody vibrates the liver;
and, it is
called the liver because it calls us to live. People
forget...no, that is not so... the
trouble is that people remember in
some other language that was created to deceive.
Alias:
Ha! That's a good one! The language o' the liver. Ha!
Tex S Jhonny
