FORENOTE
I have been writing a huge (8-part) article I shall publish here, at my Substack site. The article would be about 350 pages if published as hard-cover/printed-paper copy. I shall publish it here as an 8-Part “article” — each Part longer than 30,000 words. Do I hear you groaning? Or is that the sound of my timbers fighting the wind?
The article’s creation has consumed most of my time since July of this year (2021), when I published my last-previous work here. Fearing that readers would imagine, happily, that I have died, I decided to publish a wee ditty, so readers would cringe from observing that I continue to live. Hence the piece that follows.
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DANCING WITH TARZAN — OR, DON JUAN RISES, FOR DONA ANA TO SPURN HIM AGAIN
At the strike of 12:01 A.M. Pacific Time, 1 January 2000, I, Don Juan, El burlador de Sevilla, arose from Hell — the “Holy Sprit” (a.k.a. “Mary, Mother of God”) having ruled that I paid the moral debt I owed 1072.8 women I sullied, and the consequent debt I owed to womankind, even to Eve of that first ever of Earth’s gardens.
I assure you, dear Dona Ana, I am reformed most humbly. And my intentions are noble as my long-past nobility ought have caused me to be.
Last eve, through a seemingly endless glance, my eyes feasted on your regal beauty — purer than the sun. The sight captured my soul — what is left of it. The barkeep knew you and, magically, rendered up your adresse électronique.
Thus this note, which presumes to substitute for my might-have-been contributions of a lush colloquy we could have enjoyed had we spoken before you swept your visage from my sight. Would that this modest note inspire you to dine with me tonight at The French Laundry (where and when His Excellency, Governor Newsome will host a party of maskless “woke” Globalists).
Now some chit-chat I cast to draw you hither, dear Ana.
About 153284967 seconds ago, I spoke (by intergallactic CB) with my ex-roommate, Lucrezia Borgia, who rose from Hell with me and continues to inhabit the Hermosa Beach (CA) adobe that housed my earthly form from A.D. 2006 ‘til A.D. 2008.
Lucrecia said she had strayed into Tarzana (CA) and tarried there a while to rummage the town for evidence of human life — and found none. (Tarzana's a San Fernando Valley burg sitting near Topanga Canyon's northeast rim.)
I remembered a moment of my trashing 21 months in Southern Cal's wasteland. Just before I banished L.A. from my “life,” a detour swooped me to Tarzana. The name enchanted me; and if it hadn't, I'd have needed a lobotomy to survive the place. (I considered engaging Torquemada, an adept lobotomist I encountered in my hot dark years below.)
A road-sign said Tarzana was established 1927 — then a town, now mere "neighborhood" of Los Angeles city. Surely, I imagined, the borough’s moniker lauded Tarzan films of 1918 and the 1920s.
But no! Damned truth (that despicable substance hallucinated by brainwashed humans).
In 1915, Edgar Rice Burroughs bought a San Fernando tract he called Tarzana Ranch. He sold a portion, which became a new town. And locals named the town Tarzana to honor Burroughs.
To honor Burroughs?
I deny that history and supplant it with romance. I insist the name "Tarzana" DOES celebrate Tarzan films of the 20s — and, presciently, the 30s through 90s, too.
How can the town not glory in Johnny Weissmuller's realizations of maybe 15 essentially identical (though supposed-to-be distinct) Tarzan plots Burroughs never would have dreamed? Weissmuller was a demigod — of looks, acts, surreal bravery, animal innocence, hairless barrel-chest, which distinguishes him markedly from me. [Why, or how, you may ask, do I describe Johnny so? His films were frequent infuriating fare during incendiary nights of Satan’s realm.]
Weissmuller did not need to act. Johnny WAS Tarzan, the true immortal man of apes. Burroughs said Johnny spoke English rather like a great ape, sometimes even like Cheetah, Tarzan's pet Chimp; and Burroughs proclaimed that Johnny was, physically, far the best Tarzan ever. (Johnny, himself, did all Tarzan's stunts, and Johnny-the-swimmer won five Olympic gold medals, one Olympic bronze medal, and 52 US National Championships and set 67 world records. But I risk boring you with such wizened and wizening statistics. Je vous prie de me pardonner.)
Have you witnessed any of Johnny's Tarzan roles? Could you have appreciated his Tarzan acts beyond your 8th year? Say, your 9th? Were you a tomboy craving to emulate Tarzan, or a blithe sexual prodigy enamored by the likes of Johnny-the-demigod? Would you salivate now if you saw him near-nude wrestling pythons or riding on thick vines swinging through jungle-trees or diving from high cliffs into pools frothing at bottoms of raging waterfalls? Would you prefer to witness my bloody swordplay? No! Surely, Johnny’s feats you would prefer.
So: With the power of vision-creating language, I gift you a taste of Johnny's Tarzan art (art like watercolors whisked unwittingly on old oiled canvass, though not of watercolors whisked on old oiled canvasses). I choose a most sublime example: "Tarzan in Chichicastenango."
[The film (actually a serial) bore another name, a boring one, "The New Adventures of Tarzan." But its putative events occurred, putatively, in or near Chichicastenango. Maybe the Tarzan was Bruce Bennett (birth name Harold Herman Brix), not Johnny Weissmuller. But my memory (I saw the flick a year before I came above) — my memory prefers Johnny. And this email's story cannot happen if I do not call the film Tarzan in Chichicastenango and install Johnny the star.]
Chichicastenango is a town of Guatemala. Oh! What a singable, danceable line. Hear it as a conga:
Chichi caste nan go ♬♬♪♪
Town of Guate ma la ♬♬♪♪
I see myself behind your hypnotically luscious, enrapturing 63 inches, dear Ana, my hands holding your waist. A Cuban dance-band plays a conga (its drum-beat punctuated snakily by sounds of maracas & martini-bearing cocktail shakers). We repeat, endlessly, those melodious syllables (Chi chi ca ste nan.....), in sync with the rhythm, and we are transfixed by the Ravel's-Bolero-like mood:
Chi chi (note of D) ca ste (note of C) nan (note of D) go (note of A) ♬♬♪♪
town of (note of D) Gua te (note of C) ma (note of D) la (note of A) ♬♬♪♪
There we are, our grace and beauty illumining the whole gala premises. We near-hop one step fore (on "Chi chi") and another fore (on "ca ste"); then (on "nan") we kick our right feet right; then (on "go") we pull our right feet back; and then on "town of" we hop forward a step and on "Guat te" we hop forward another step, and on "ma" we kick our left feet left, and on "la" we pull our left feet back. With every move we flip our hips (side-&-fore & side-&-back).
Our rapture infects all other guests of the lavish, art deco nightclub. One, then another, then more — all add their bodies to the conga line.
But wait. I digress. Back to that brilliant movie, "Tarzan in Chichicastenango."
The film opens with a scene of Tarzan Johnny & his trusty girl chimpanzee, "Cheetah," riding a single-prop airplane headed toward Chichicastenango. We hear the engine's whirs, and we see quick pans: plane-cab-to-ground-to-plane-cab-to ground. And we see shots of Johnny's deadpan face trying to pretend it has some reaction related to the fake mise en scène. (The plane-cab's a little construct in a studio & the land & its events are sundry other films' recollections of landscapes & distant happenings not actually occurring under any actual plane traveling anywhere.)
Much, for a minute, we see Cheetah doing flips (back flips, front flips, side flips, more flips, endless flips) as Cheetah (sweet chimp-girl) shows she's amazed by the sights of the ground below & the motions & sounds of the plane & the fact that some producer wrote her part into a script & story that could not bear any motivation that could explain her presence (or, if you anthropomorphize a bit, her character's presence).
Cheetah exclaims:
Ughuh.
Ughuh.
Cheep-uh cheep.
Ughuh.
Whoopuh.
Whoopuh cheep.
***
Johnny extends, about 45 degrees downward, his right arm & the index finger of his right hand, as if he were about to thrust his limb through the plane's windshield. Then we see why Johnny made the gesture that told us "Look! Down there!"
Below (or, actually, in the other films spliced into this one), are perhaps 20 African elephants stampeding through an equatorial African rain forest. The lead bull sports an immense erection (despite, from the late Thirties through the Fifties, Hollywood rules barred showing human sex organs or even a married couple lying together, fully clothed, in a bed, unless one couple-member had a foot on the floor on the bed's right side, and the other had a foot on the floor on the left).
Running before the charging pachyderms are 50 Watusis screaming in panic. Fake chicken-leg-bones seem stuck through the noses of the galloping men wearing leopard-skin loincloths & waving spears. The women's (actually, Bushman women’s) grass skirts are disintegrating because the steatopygiac chickadees are running too madly.
The "camera" zooms to events surrounding the panic. We see jaguars, tigers, zebras, hyenas, water buffalos; rhinos butting heads; a lazing pride of lions; several sombrero-wearing Hispanic horsemen; giraffes, an aardvark, a couple peccaries, a parked jeep, an anaconda embracing a caiman, a lone capybara [kah-pee-BAH-ra, the world's largest rodent, a denizen of South America & the bottom of Panama], and six specimens of coatimundi [ko-AH-tee-MOON-dee], a long-snoot raccoon-kin ranging through parts of all three Americas] .......
The plane lands — on the Brazilian Amazon, since it is a sea-plane landing on a mile-and-a-quarter-high Guatemala mountain. Tarzan & Cheetah climb onto a dock. They turn & look into the water. They startle as they witness piranhas gobbling hippopotami.
But what's that foreign sound? The theatre-goers show annoyance. Oh, it is I, Don Juan, howling for hope that you, Dona Ana, will join me at The French Laundry — or in my bed. My dog-child, Tati [pron. tah-TEE], is howling, too, though the film does not place him on the terra-not-firma with Johnny & Cheetah, despite Tati can outswim either & wears a tulip between his teeth.
Sic transit coatimundi [Sick TRAN-sit ko-AH-tee-MOON-dee].
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"Sic transit coatimundi" references, satirically, a fictive line of the fictive Jesus of the "Gospels" of the "New Testament" — the "Jesus" created by the Roman Church's inventions, premised on materials like Thomas À Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (circa 1400 AD) and on the frauds of Paul of Tarsus.
The actual, official, Church-of-Rome line is "Sic transit gloria mundi" ("Thus passes the glory of the world"), which seems to have derived from Kempis's proposition "O quam cito transit gloria mundi" ("How quickly passes the glory of the world").
When a new Pope is installed, a “master of ceremonies” falls to his knees before the new Pope. The “master of ceremonies” holds a silver or brass reed bearing a piece of smoldering tow (untwisted bundle of continuous fibre filaments). Three times, as the tow burns away, the “master of ceremonies” says — loudly but mournfully: "Sancte Pater, sic transit gloria mundi." ("Holy Father, so passes the glory of the world.")
The Church's inventions and the frauds of Paul of Tarsus?
The Roman Church discarded two "Gospels" that clashed critically with the Church's designs. The discarded Gospels reflected the nearly Vegan & very communistic teachings of Jesus & underscored his never having asserted that he was Son of God or that his flesh or blood would save anyone from anything.
Even the saved Gospels [Mathhew, Marc, Luc, John] do not assert that Jesus was Son of God, but observe that Jesus said he was the "Son of Man." One must be amazed by how the Roman Church's apologists have tried to argue that "Son of Man" means "Son of God." (Here is not a place appropriate to exposition of the absurdity of the arguments.)
Twenty years after Jesus was crucified for committing sedition against Roman rule, Paul abandoned the Jewish sect that Jesus had begun. Paul took with him the majority of members of Jesus's new sect. Paul convinced his followers that Jesus was a god and that to win salvation in heaven, they must worship "Jesus-the-god." And Paul asserted a doctrine neither Jesus nor anyone else had suggested before — that the previously unitary Jewish God was a duality of Father and Son. Paul injected also the concept “the Holy Ghost.”
So, a "divine Trinity,” a "savior"-god, and transubstantiation were birthed by Paul's fraud and the Roman Churches inventions.
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Don Juan began weeping. His ESP showed Dona Ana yawning and deleting his (Juan’s) message. Juan drank a litre of Absinthe and fell into stupor.
Some months hence, Dona Ana developed giant stigmatas (both hands and feet) and exsanguinated — to death. The Holy See declared her saint.
Don Juan disintegrated, like a salmon that swims to its origin and spawns.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
[The below-copied photos show several specimens of Coatimundi. Aren't they cute?]