Update - A number of people have told me they don't understand this post. To help you, please go back and read my
original encounter with Little Coches. With that background, you will understand how she Zen-whacked me upside the head on Saturday, May 12, calling into question everything she'd previously told me. During our rollicking (mostly one-sided) conversation she said she was Katherine Hepburn's daughter and, as a child, had been on the boat used in the filming of "The African Queen." She told me she'd won an Oscar. She said she was a Marine Corps nurse with the rank of colonel during the Vietnam War. She said she has a license to haul federal material for the U.S. government. She said she is licenced to carry a weapon, and is not hesitant to use it. She told me everything I put in the poem,
Preface to Chaos. And, she told me, without a trace of self-pity, that she and Thomas are homeless.
At first I despaired of writing up this encounter. Later Sunday morning I hit on the idea of a poem, Escher-esque in tone, and prefaced by a quote on chaos magic and a lyric from Bob Dylan. And that is what you will find below. I suggest someone with some solid Hollywood connections talk with this woman before she disappears. I now think of her as the Little Big (Wo)Man of Las Cruces.
Rather than trying to recover and maintain a tradition that links back to the past (and former glories), Chaos Magick is an approach that enables the individual to use anything that s/he thinks is suitable as a temporary belief or symbol system. What matters is the results you get, not the 'authenticity' of the system used. So Chaos Magic then, is not a system - it utilises systems and encourages adherents to devise their own, giving magic a truly Postmodernist flavour. - Phil Hine, Condensed Chaos
You walk into the room
With your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked
And you say "who is that man?
You try so hard
But you don't understand Just what you'll say
When you get home
Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones? - Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man
Preface to Chaos
She lived,
as she often asserted,
“like a man,” by herself, paying her
own bills,
and answering to nobody.
She “chose” not to marry,
not to have children,
always, as she was fond of saying,
“paddling the g—d— boat by myself.”
This expletive was familiar on her
tongue - she helped initiate
the easy familiarity the modern woman
shows with vulgar language.
Hepburn and Mephistopheles
Little Coches and Thomas are homeless
now,
which is fairly odd,
because Little Coches is Katherine
Hepburn's daughter;
the two of them strong necked,
east-west,
always the contest of wills.
Little Coches wins round three;
she turns to acting,
even winning an Oscar,
while soldiering in Vietnam,
a colonel in the U.S. Marines,
camped out somewhere
on the wrong side of the DMZ,
she and her comrade nurses
blown off their intended course
while coming under friendly fire,
and so they run in the wrong direction
until they can't run anymore,
and they set up a base camp,
and Katherine walks the perimeter
while Little Coches drinks gallons of bad water while
filming "The African Queen," and
her little girl sits cross-legged in the
boat, hunckered down,
so she won't appear
in
the
frame.
So many suicides;
Little Coches will not speak of them
this day.
She is intent on scraping together
some cash money,
so she can help Thomas get his truck
back,
the two of them
hauling federal secrets -
(sometimes only a single paper rides alone in the cavernous compartment of an 18-wheeler) -
at $80,000 a pop, New York to L.A.,
and she's not afraid to use her gun,
if that's what it takes
to get the job done, and,
somewhere,
deep in space,
a supernova is busy rewriting
the rules of science while,
somewhere,
Katherine is breaking the rules
again.
Actually, you should be very happy (glad) that you're glad (happy) to be here. I could
so go for a gumball. So, in that Spirit (SITS), here's Part 3.
Little Coches, Bengal tigers, Bob Hope and Zen Buddhism
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