Beginning with word number 6037

And out popped Jerry, now Gerome. Wild hair, big lobe ear­ring, tie-dyed rain­bow t shirt and bell bot­toms. If he could have retained con­scious­ness through the Fin­kle­baum tran­si­tion, he would have real­ized he was now the hip guy from the vil­lage of dreams he had always wanted to be. Haight Ash­bury 69. Peace and Love man. End of the world? That’s so tomor­row. Think­ing about it, ya know, he real­izes there is only a vac­uum before his births–both this one and that other one–so who’s to say what lies beyond. Only, like sweet and sour death, Chi­nese entrée num­ber 7, then no feel­ing. He was feel­ing pretty good right now, groovy chicks all around wrapped in batik fab­ric with­out wear­ing bras, guys on the cor­ners sell­ing shit and play­ing gui­tars, every­body cool, and every­thing kind of pink. Oh, that’s the glasses. A freak of some kind danced by him, pressed a sugar cube into his palm and said, “here, man. Dig this.” Gerome ate it. Sweet.

Twelve min­utes later he found him­self on a sun­lit cor­ner watch­ing all the doors of all the shops on the street fly­ing open and every­thing inside being sucked out into the street and head­ing east, everybody’s stuff and every­body else’s. Nobody seemed both­ered by this turn of events. The tide of pos­ses­sions went against the sun, which is not what had been pre­dicted, but what was once heresy is now truth. Moment by moment Gerome too began to feel dis­solved. Per­haps this was the wit’s end he had heard about. He was vaguely aware of an old habit of shoplifting–were all of these things flow­ing by his feet his pre­vi­ously thefted goods?

Gerome had egg on his shirt and his feet felt as though weighted with snow­shoes. He knew no one on the street, but they all seemed to know him and to hold him, stand­ing there innocu­ous, with some kind of spe­cial regard. Had they seen his rebirth? Had he merely fol­lowed paper danc­ing foot­steps to get here? Trin­kets he heard chim­ing in a kitchen win­dow, the win­dow sill where pies used to be left to cool. He slowly turned his head to focus there for a moment and could see right through the apart­ment wall where somebody’s mother was tend­ing some­thing on the stove. She wore an apron, black garter belt, panties and bustier. Long legs in black stock­ings and earth san­dals. He wished he had a man­dolin so he could wor­ship her.

Turn­ing back to Ash­bury, he could see that all the street peo­ple seemed to have woken up to the fact that every­thing around them had been slushed away in the mov­ing river of mate­r­ial pos­ses­sion. Per­haps we are next? Their inno­cent eyes seemed to inquire of him. Gerome lost noth­ing because he had come with noth­ing. The peo­ple noticed this. “He is the one”, declared a red headed girl with painted on freck­les. “The hid­den seeker”.

“We have sought him, he has been in hid­ing”, voiced a teenager with a baby at her breast.

“Today is the Sorghum of Neesam, the day that has been fore­told by our ances­tors and feared by all those who want Hubert Humphrey in the White House”, said a golden boy with an auto­harp who was prac­tic­ing for his audi­tion with the Lovin Spoonful.

Gerome tried to protest, but then they were on him, a cos­mic burst of relief. From out of nowhere appeared jade lamps filled with patchouli oil. Vir­gins kneeled before him, slipped off his sweaty socks and bathed his feet with what looked like swamp water.

“From the Hare Krisna tem­ple” one said.

“Blessed are the eels there” Gerome replied.

“Ahh­hhh”, replied the mul­ti­tude in unison.

Mad thoughts raced around the perime­ter of Gerome’s brain. He felt as though he were sink­ing into the con­crete side­walk with each rev­o­lu­tion of his mind spin­ning like a roulette wheel. Couldn’t he share some of this delir­ium? Should he bet on Red 22? Was there a gypsy in the crowd?

He felt a flower-bedecked maiden hold his palms upward, then the soft touch of a dan­de­lion land­ing in each one.

“See”, she pro­claimed, “He likes butter”

The leaves on the trees rus­tled furi­ously as an unsea­son­ably cool wind picked up. They rus­tled, but they did not let go. Some­thing was in his pocket and it was twitch­ing. Did he know the answer? Did he know the question?

The back of the crowd parted and a fig­ure in a maroon robe with white stars approached Gerome’s cor­ner. He was short, but that was because he was on his knees in roller skates, which made a ter­ri­ble racket on the concrete.

“Wait, I know you–” began Gerome, but he was cut off by the mys­ti­cal robed fig­ure who said…