Manifesting An Illegally Parked Jaguar XK
ADAM MICHAEL LUEBKE
Los Angeles
This short article is meant to inspire you. It is meant to speak to the masses. This is what I think of every time star members of the GOP tell the rest of us not to be jealous of their fancy homes and cars, but to instead hope that, one day, we’ll be in those same wealthy neighborhoods with them.
I took my piping hot cup of coffee to a bench and sat down. I like to let the coffee cool considerably before drinking it. The bench on which I sat was my usual. Small local businesses lined the street behind me, and across the street. Like so many boxes, orange, brown, yellow, white. Each with its own custom plastic sign above its doorway, and many with an awning matching the color scheme of the sign.
The bench I rested on is a bench where normally old folks sit. Nobody was there today. It’s not only for elderly folks. Even if it was, I feel 78 years old, and have for awhile. And that’s way too old to give a shit about what anybody else thinks.
The sun beat my forehead. A gorgeous white car slowly rolled across the street. The tinted windows made seeing the driver difficult. The car made an illegal U-turn and pulled to a stop in front of the bench where I sat.
Illegally Parked
A Jaguar XK. Its engine purred like a big kitty cat. That’s how they’re designed. That really low, powerful growl and engineered sputter from the dual exhaust system. A muffled bumping sound could be heard — music from within the car.
Who’s in that car, I thought. I was going to open my Semiotics textbook and learn something, but not with that LA jungle Jaguar crouched ten feet from me. It’s shiny, clean exterior. The wide, powerful stance of the wheel base — an agile being hugging the ground. A reminder that when you die, the car will cling to earth.I sensed danger and excitement. What in hell are people doing with such luxurious, sleek vehicles? Don’t they know that one blown red light from a little old lady downtown is all it takes to make your car go up in smoke? Doesn’t matter how nice it is. The red lights only demand we stop, but there is no check in place to make sure that happens.
I hate to feel inspired by a goddamned chunk of perfectly bent metal and fiberglass. I’d rather be impervious to curves and contours. But there I was, holding my textbook, my hand sweating on its cover, staring at it.
An Unlikely Passenger
A little old man shuffled along the sidewalk. He wore an old red and white plaid shirt tucked deeply into working man’s faded blue jeans. They were baggy on him. Suspenders held up his pants.
He stepped up to the Jaguar’s passenger door and rapped on the window. His knuckles hit the glass with ferocity. Was that his car? Or was he going to yank a gun from his waistband and tell the driver to get on the asphalt and lick it while he drove away in a white streak?
The door popped open from inside. The old man lowered himself into the vehicle. I got a glimpse of the driver. A young girl. Middle Eastern features. Tapping away on her smart phone. Her slouched body looked bored behind the plush leather steering wheel.
The man struggled to get the door shut. His weak hands grabbed at the handle. The girl appeared to be chewing a wad of gum far too big for her oral cavity. She churned it with her tongue. She slammed her jaws together. Kneading it. Stretching it past her lips with her tongue. Finally, the door closed. Their world shut from mine once again. Heavily tinted. Opaque and blinding white.
The car merged into traffic and nearly clipped a minivan. No matter, those new Jaguars are equipped with extra-sensory software that repels other vehicles or people from its bumpers and sides. You can drive any way you want when you own a car like that. You can drive any way you want when you have that much money.
Let The Universe Sort It Out, You Germ
Just like I’ve been desperately manifesting my dream home (even though another family moved in), I’m doing the same with this car. Imagining my own solid hands on the steering wheel. But first I had to mentally kick that disinterested witch to the curb. Get out of the car! I shouted at her with my mind.Which is more serious than people think. The girl probably felt that burst of energy. Zing! She probably stopped chewing her gum for a moment. What was that? she thought. But maybe not. Indigestion, she probably thought. Except it wasn’t a thought. More of an understanding. Humans have lost their telepathic abilities. Their grimy antennae don’t do what they used to back before our man Christ came to earth.
My mind is my most powerful instrument. Step out of that car! And spit out that wad of gum. It’s too much. Are you chewing the whole pack? You’re going to lose your teeth before you’re thirty.
What are you a doctor? You’re not even thirty yourself, she screamed back.
I feel 78, I’d say, and that’s enough for me to give advice to young people like you. Now let me behind the wheel so I can manifest this buzzard. Put my hands, with their light scattered freckles, around the steering wheel. Put my right foot with its brown shoe on the gas pedal and speed away.
Turn up the car’s 14-speaker, 525-watt sound system to full capacity and see if the speakers can hold that intensity while I speed toward Mexico. Fourteen speakers, strategically placed. Guonod’s Faust. Dear Jesus. How many angels can you fit on the head of one aluminum dome tweeter?
This is all in my mind, the reader should know, but that doesn’t matter, because what is the physical realm if not the accumulation of the multitude of nonphysical realms? You’ve got to seat yourself in your dream and manipulate every aspect to bring it about on this plane.
Open the cat to its 155-mph speed limit and let it ride Hell. If angels are shrieking from strategically placed speakers in the cab, is it a legion of demons howling from the tires as the hot rubber struggles to hold itself together against the pavement?Oh Lord, from where do our desires arise? Why do they persist? What good is a sports car when there are people dying in our streets? Of what necessity is the opera when there is constant discord spread so rampant on our earth?I’ll think about it more clearly in the seat of my new Jaguar. I’ll have more clarity speeding along at 155 mph toward Xanadu.
