Flying to America Read Free

as peak load servicing of maximum social stress. Under omni-favorable conditions no one will ask you any questions and you will be able to go your way utilizing our two great options, trial and error.
    “There is no limit to what can be accomplished,” the genius said. “That is unfortunate, I would prefer a limit. The latest schedules call for a rate of growth in the corruption of public officials ofsomething like twenty-two percent per annum. This ‘noise’ in the system is a good thing. Successful administration endangers anti-growth positions.
    “The sudden world population bulge offers no threat, contrary to certain opinions expressed in the newspaper. Preterminal mummification of the deserving poor has been spoken of but I don’t think we’ll actually do it — not yet. Managerial capabilities and leadership potential may yet be discovered in you, predicted by your colored felt-pen drawings as a child, but not noticed at that time. These qualities offer possible new solutions that should not be discounted until progressive failure phases have been worked through. ‘Pipe’ dreams, which allow brine to cool passions and oil to flow under the ice, should be sought after. Better people yet unborn will evolve still other methods, doubtless superior to our own, yet retaining a flavor of improvisation, poking around, smashed thumbs, chemical accidents. It is difficult to do anything right, the first time. As one erects slatted fences in order to control dune formation, so we mix vodka and vermouth in a fully bundled hard- and software operation designed to soothe those of our clients whose jitters incapacitate them for ordinary life. Cyclic event-recurrences distress those who had hoped that rewards and punishments would change places, that painting things with red lead would retard lust, that Breton would not patent the soluble fish, that in the fires along the coasts at midsummer, witches are not being burnt, really. That is all I have to say, at this time.”
    “You did very well,” I said to the genius.
    “Yes!” he said. “I think so!”
    2 April
    Just saw, on the street, a man in yellow shorts, orange shirt, orange straw hat. He was carrying three naked putters and a book, the latter decently dust-jacketed. And he was shouting, shouting at the top of his lungs:
    “I am angry!”
    “I am very angry!
    “I am extremely angry!
    “Oh, I am so angry!
    “I am furious!”
    Something for the film?
    3 April
    Today we shot “country music.” These country boys, despised and admired, know what they’re about. The way they pull on their strings — the strings of their instruments and the strings of their fates. Bringing up the bass line here, inserting “fills” there, in their expensive forty-dollar Western shirts and plain ordinary eight-dollar jeans. We’re filming a big battle dance in Rogers, Tennessee. It’s the first time the crew really has had something to chew upon, and everyone is slightly excited. We set up backstage trying not to get in the way. Four bands are competing at the Masonic Temple. The musicians are unscrewing their flasks and tasting the bourbon inside, when they are not lighting their joints and pipes and hookahs. Meanwhile they’re looking over the house, a big pile of stone erected in 1928, and wondering whether the wiring will be adequate to the demands of their art. The flasks and joints are being passed around, and everyone is wiping his mouth on his sleeve. And so the ropes holding the equipment to the roofs of the white station wagons are untied, and the equipment is carried onto the stage, with its closed curtain and its few spotty worklights shining. The various groups send out for supper, ordering steak sandwiches on a bun, hold the onions or hold the lettuce, as individual taste dictates. We send out for supper, too. The most junior member of each group or a high-ranking groupie goes over to the café with the list, an envelope on which all the orders have been written,