A Walk in the Park

Richard F. Yates
“A Walk in the Park”
12 July 2010

“The myth that everything in the world can be rationally explained had been gaining ground since the time of Descartes. An inversion was necessary to restore the balance” (Hans Richter, Dada - Art and Anti-Art, p. 64).

You can’t have a party in the jungle without breaking a few eggs.

Never had I seen such misery, such mischief. It smelled, faintly, of cinnamon---and I felt compelled to fotograph it’s gritty underbelly.

Nothing lead me to this conclusion. Nothing mercuried, brassed, or silver-oxided me to it, either, but I came on bended knee and deposited seventy-five cents in nickels at its feet in tribute.

I protest your government---your cares and wants---your photos and advertisements and coupons. I’ll have none of it---excepting the chocolate milk, of course.

You’ve heard, perhaps, that I’ve a weakness for string-cheese. I assure you, the inoculations are painful, but they are working, and my tolerance to the substance grows by the day. I only fear, now, that coming mulberry dawn when the windows are wet with dew---and slightly moldy.

Undercover of bright search lights and glittering lightning bug pulses, he broke loose from his captives’ lair and drank his fill from the neighbors’ swimming pool next door.

I don’t like you much. You won’t pay me enough to validate your beliefs, and, therefore, I shant own the pinball machine that I want before the first flakes of winter begin to descend.

Wallow in my ignorance!

Mumbling caused the First World War.

I have no sympathy for the holes in your shoes. They are clearly a function of your perverse banking practices.

Lunch-time is an expression of the will of God---as long as we hold the pickles.

Never lick your fingers after shaking a stranger’s hand.

Construction of the castle began in 1941. It was completed in 1912, a full 3 years ahead of schedule.

PEN DEATH!!

We buried the old girl in the back yard next to two cats, a rat, and half a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich.

There are three reasons why I refuse to take politics seriously: (1) most people are too self absorbed and stupid to understand how their actions might affect the rest of the world---and I firmly believe that nothing I do can remedy this situation; (2) all politicians are people (see (1) above) as well as being liars, crooks, and (like all police officers) bullies who enjoy holding power over as many people as possible; and (3) by participating in any way in the political system, I feel as though I am not only endorsing that ridiculous joke, but I’m also, in some sense, validating it. In place of political action, I propose ART---acidic, confrontational, shocking, melodramatic, ridiculous, unfine, unreasonable, irrational ART, which forces those people who encounter it to wonder why it was created and what, if anything, it might mean.

Break the spokes
Rust the cogs
Salt the gardens
and Piss on the sacred grounds
and if anyone should ask:
“Why did you do that?”
answer them:
“Why indeed! This is a mystery that requires further investigation!”

The fantasy world (however dystopian) in which we all currently live was constructed out of lies, and few people today seem to poke their heads out of their electronic bubbles long enough to let their eyes adjust to natural light. We have been fed a constant stream of advertisement and pseudo-ethical propaganda, disguised as entertainment, for so long now that our search for ULTIMATE VALUES, that series of questions that each of us must ask of the universe (most unanswerable) that will help us to decide how we act and think and believe, comes not from our own earnest enquiry, but from media programming, a process that begins in our earliest youth and continues throughout our lives. We all know these things to be true:
*Believe in God and you will go to Heaven (where the streets are paved with gold.)
*Buy these products and you will be happy and loved.
*Follow the rules (except when you are expected to break them) and society will keep rolling along---progressing---saving lives and making the world a better, safer, and happier place.
*Try your hardest, and you can be anything you want to be.
*Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain---he’s just a harmless lobbyist helping to save the world.

It’s all bullshit.

I don’t care about Tom Cruise’s religion or Brad and Angelina’s marriage or Dick Chaney’s shotgun or the bloody glove in the SUV or Sarah Palin’s chest hair or that new rap song or those old Levi’s jeans or tea parties or CSI or oil leaks or tran-fats or anything. I hate it all. It’s boring. It’s not me. “It says nothing to me about my life.”

...which will be over before I’ve finished doing my thing—and then all the people who care about me or who like my writing or my paintings or my taste in music will all be gone, too---and then the sun will explode or a huge hunk of space rock will hit the earth or some super-bug will kill all the living things on the planet---AND WHO’S GONNA GIVE A SHIT THEN??

Not me. Certainly not the Martians living in their hidy-holes beneath their planet’s crust.

So...what the fuck do we bother doing until then? I don’t know. (I’ve been trying to decide that for way more than a week now. It’s exhausting.) It doesn’t matter, really, ultimately, anyway, but that doesn’t mean we should give up, does it?

I say: Have a glass of chocolate milk. Go dancing. Lay a wet one on your lover. Bake some cookies. Or just draw a picture. Who gives a fuck if it isn’t any good? Anyone who doesn’t like it is gonna die someday anyway, so fuck ‘em! If drawing that picture (or singing that song or writing that poem or doing that dance...) gives you joy, then take it while you can get it, and if it makes others smile when they look at it (whether they’re smiling with you or AT you doesn’t matter, either---see above) then that shit is worth doing.

AND if you believe any of this, I’ve got a bottle of Premium Quality SNAKE OIL I can let you have, REAL CHEAP! (It’ll get you HIGH!!! I guarantee it!!!)

And if it takes batteries to make you happy, then by God, use the damn batteries.

---So Sayeth the Supreme Bunny Warlord!

ssssssssssssss....