Little devil's coat [Mäntelchen]
		'Let's see some credentials, son.' This is the end of my coat, my little coat of invention, my coat of integrity of identity meaning nothing. There it is living outside my body in a state of eternal bliss. Void of meaning, void of understanding. This is the end of my coat's sphere, its expansion, its loveliness. My coat ends here. It starts in the desert and it ends here. I was born Primate III, third son of a family of leeches. The magic process took me and inverted the pain. Now that I'm on this level it looks like child's play. When my mother drowned she left no trace. For me it was to take, for me it was to stay. So I stayed and waited. Not for her to come back but for my coat to start to grow. And grow it did once I learned about the preliminaries. The layers, the levels, the phases. As mirrored in the faces around me. But when I went to look at my face, at a facet of my coat, a speck of light within the cloth I could only see the void and a vortex of colors. There is always color in the void, did you know that? It's impossible not to see anything, or in the words of the immoral bard: unimpaired vision sees naught, impaired one sees all. See? It took years for me to realize all these things, all the details of my life and the lives of those passing thru. Now I had the knowledge. Not in words as you can easily see from my way of putting it, but in a blur of pictures, the visual equivalent of the inside of my coat. You either have it or you don't. Ubiquitous knowledge in all the faraway places where I can't exist anymore. The sickness took hold of me one afternoon and never left me as long as I had a body to leave myself. It came in, sat down and watched. Not from afar as it used to but close to me, close to my coat I wore unconsciously, unacknowledged. It melted running slowly into the material. I felt the cold spread from my feet to the top of my spine. I felt contaminated, I felt sick. It got me right where it could hold me. In the innocent bubbles of my blood. They didn't know anything about their sacred task and defended me. With anything they could possibly come up with. Wrong reaction altogether, they simply slowed down the process of renewal that would take place in my very cells very soon. The coat crusted over, shed its old skin and emerged shiny and bright. Immensely old and holy coat worn by generation upon generation of unworthy primates who did not deserve to die and bequeath it to their loved ones. Hence, calling nature a lie [in a universe without primates would there be love? would there be death? would there be a universe? I'm not the one to ask. I'm not here.]. So the sickness embraced me kissing me on the mouth giving me herpes and tonsillitis and bronchitis. The little coat glowed. It decided to continue living with me. Not to leave me outside with the others, empty headed, empty handed and above all, stark naked. I could have shed it. But what could I expect from being a nonentity, an inorganic thing, a coatless creature out on the prowl like so many others, invisible like the most of the rest of the world. I wanted visibility, space and time, existence and pain to enjoy it. Otherwise why go to all of this trouble? Just let me get a taste of this ... of this world. Just make me feel I'm alive. That is what it was thinking. Does it think? It is thinking but does it actually actively do things? I'm not so sure. It might have a different expression for it. But we don't belong to the same level so I wouldn't be able to understand it anyway. And you, of course, wouldn't either. Get what I'm saying? The little coat armed with love and understanding is incomprehensible. It envelopes us with a certain kind of ignorance of our species yet it understands us better than we understand it or ourselves for that reason. It is close to our very essence which it tries not to stifle and it quavers in exitement at the energy exuding. So, again, I'm asking you why should it leave? It didn't forsake my mother when she decided to cast it off and leave it behind in primate super-love to the little ones still to be born and still-born not long afterwards. The coat functions as an army of selves woven into one. The coat is dysfunctional in that it doesn't protect us from the world. It can be used if you know how to but it's no safeguard against realities. It can be taken off the hook, out of the closet but you can never close the door or pull out the hook. You cannot scratch off your skin, know what I mean? The dwarf's coat, the elf's cape, the snake's rubber, the goddam little girl's skirt cannot be moved one inch. You won't be able to touch them. They exist somewhere else. Mostly outside of you, close enough to merge, to be inside, to dance the bright colors of the never empty vortex of void. I stand on the balustrade of the Western balcony. 'Hail thee Ra, fierce sun burning bright. Hail thee Isis-Luna of the night. Hail thee Air, the Horus-Hawk. Hail thee Earth on which I walk.' Should I jump? Am I destined to jump? It's raining. Or should I return? That's difficult. My coat keeps changing colors. Energetically charged it doesn't wait, it only reacts. Will it turn into a parachute? Will it turn into a tent holding my big bloated body courtesy of Park and Bodice and Richard and Mircella? Will it come back and welcome my mother at the end of the desert? She won't drown. She'll only take a dive, deep within the earth. And her coat will wait for her right at the shore, although coats won't really wait. They just exist. Coexist with us and exist for themselves. Just in case we forget. There'll always be a little coat. This is where mine ends. invocation of the Egyptian deities based on universal blessing as given in Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson, Illuminatus! [Pt. 3, Leviathan]