We, Who Have Invented Happiness

How no one notices what looks to be a very real and grown Canadian man snoozing in his seat, as lights come up and those rubbernecks shuffle out, that was easy enough to explain. Kilroy Clem, he blends in, and he’s just that good. Kilroy, lulled, the benign indifference of the universe hovered above him, drifted and came to in the dark. Lame, that. Kilroy, as he told the story, would zhush up the details. Gonzo, a famed journalist coined the term. Here’s Kilroy, Gonzo details on the fly:    

How he stuffed his gob with edibles, and dozed off under the dome in Griffith Park, Kilroy explained, that’s how he found himself locked in for the night. Chalk it up to edibles. A hit of acid was more his speed, and, frankly, Kilroy looked down on edibles as the bird-feed of goddam, no good hippies. But edibles was what he went with, Shit. 

The planetarium, the famous one you see in all those movies, the one at the end of Observatory Road - step into that art-deco eye-sore above the hills, and there we are. The joint closes at ten. Kilroy, confused, steps into the main foyer. He checks his phone. Fifteen to eleven. The place, heavy on the gloom. Empty how a boneyard is empty. Silently, Kilroy pads across polished floor in his flip-flops. Those door handles? Nada? Try those ove- how bout those? Hmm. Just as we thought. Those goddam doors speak French; just like a Sartre play, there’s No Exit. Kilroy stares back the way he came; takes in cool marble with those small, jerky movements. His eyes dart around. His eyes, somehow both dead, but quick. Sharp, his eyes, alert; but had you held eye-contact more than a minute, his face, Kilroy’s face, would give way to a Nietszchean abyss. As his eyes adjust, Kilroy, he peels his lips; this smile, half as wide as the Cheshire Cat’s is wide. As though we were in a TV episode, cue the soundtrack; Dye, “Fantasy,” what else?        

The Opera ghost, from that Gaston Leroux novel? Kilroy Clem, as Lon fucken Chaney! 

Whoosh, Whoosh - Gaunt, fangs bared under that mane of sandy hair, his cream-colored bathrobe flaps behind him as though it were a cape, Kilroy Clem, arms wide, arms spread, howls the way men have forgotten to howl. Embrace that primordial, burning darkness! Embrace those sworling particles! You can do naught else! Stars, gas and entropy. Feel the love, love the indifference. Gahh! Puh! The Big Bang was wasted on you people!  

There are nights much as this night, when Kilroy hovers over those lights below, pale by the lights from his own house in the hills - and whispers what he whispers and what he whispers is, That though you and especially you, that you and that goddam screeching ape, that howler monkey, that bird, that pigeon that paints your hot, waxy coats birdshit-white, that every clot that is quick and is quick no more, that every lump that shits smaller, fouler lumps, that might be these clumps of bile came from the same shared, shimmering ooze, but we are not the same. He whispers, Hate each other as I have hated you. One day, I will no longer be alive, and on that day, to tell the truth, not a good goddam thing will change. 

A pithy remark from Nietzsche might be at home here: We have invented happiness, say the last men, and blink. 

Kilroy, he blinks too. He blinks and asks, So? He asks, What of it? 

Kilroy shrugs and gives his head a shake. We have invented happiness, and we have done nothing with our happiness.        

These thoughts race with Kilroy, and soon outrun his footsteps. Back under the big dome, he weaves between seats. Hop, hop, hop. He flies out to the foyer and faceplants.  

Murky paintings plaster the shadow, pitched under the rotunda ceiling where you come in from out there, the outside. Kilroy, his voice thunderous, and this is what the thunder said: Do not remember me, remember Rudolf Hess! Ian Curtis, he was right, you bastards! Every last goddam one of you, you all forgot Rudolf Hess! 

Kilroy spreads himself like marmalade and embraces the icy floor - good god, even his panting, yes, even that is sexual! There is no post-orgasmic chill with this man - only more static! The sheets cling to this man the way women cling to this man! Kilroy and the girls under Kilroy, Climax comes as a jolt, then what’s left is somehow more crackling tension than before. On his tottering feet now, Kilroy watches his sweat evaporate from off the celestial floor. The soundtrack went dead, and only now does Kilroy hear the silence. He sways, only to pick up another rhythm. Oasis, Cranberries. We can see him now. “Those who were seen dancing,” Nietzsche explained, “were thought insane by those who could not hear the music.”               

The vast of night turns pre-dawn blue. Footfalls, muted rubber, dull and lost. Kilroy Clem blankly treads his way up a short flight of steps and stumbles through this door. Outside, on this upper, raised tier; there’s the tightly-packed urban sprawl simians have crammed down in the basin stretched below us. A staircase wraps around one of these smaller domes; Kilroy loops his way down and steps onto concrete.       

The lot is warm. Again, there’s that golden ball above the clouds. The himmel itself is dull blue, and clear, but it won’t stay that way. Cars will come soon to cram the lot, bringing daytime tourists. Across the pebbly macadam, the color of Kilroy’s Cadillac matches the color of Kilroy’s bathrobe. Small crackles and clacks and Kilroy plants himself in the driver’s seat and checks his sandals and picks out small shards of rock wedged in his soles. Behind the wheel, Kilroy switches on his Shoegaze mix. Eye contact with himself in the rearview. Eyes, every which way, take it all in. There’s that eye-sore above the hills. There’s trees, that line the road on our way down. There’s Nietszche, who said what he said, and what he said was this: The ice is near, the loneliness is terrible - but how peacefully all things lie in the light.