E-Flo: The Ballin' Monkey E-$$$

Eric Tomczak
Illustrations: Greg Mirza-Avakyan
2012 ET Press

PART ONE: E-money the ballin monkey Hello. My name is E-money the ballin' monkey. Some call me E-flo, but do not be misled, for it is E-$$$ which makes me wear the glasses. E-flo does not know, but as you can tell, not easily identified to the untrained I. You see, thats how it all began you know. Under a banana tree mama monkey birthed a little one, "more of a cheddar bunny than I'll ever be" And, considering you "are what you eat", little monkey can eat a tasty treat of banana pot pie and be forever alright, high. Bernie the Cheddar Bunny met E-flo the magic monkey on a branch of the kola tree, you see? Honey bunny got worried and went out searching for thee...And as most of you knows the stories 'n prose. Upside rightside down- polarized for the right sound. The jungle is next to a farm. Milo doesn't like to be pet. Lookin' down from the tree I could see it. Freegan (n) One who will not support the meat industry but will happily eat from a dumpster or roadkill. Milo is no freegan. Not all the bunnies are created equally, the law quality before equality. Those bunny slaves (do not get paid), not honey or cheddar remember, get fed to the evil snake prince, who resides in the upstairs secret lair, bunny does not think it fair, snake prince does not care. The cheddar, the honey, the scared little bunnies find a home on the breakfast platter by a creature up the ladder. Joker said so too, "The bunny can stay, this is the word and the law of the prophets". The farm life is an isolated field experiment, for those wild jungle creatures, especially the hero featured, E-Maestro de la selva. "Animal injustice is a way of life for us who eat from the the dumpster - once the caretaker has had his fill. And the caretaker has an appetite to kill. Thats where the monkey got his glasses, when all I's were turned to the south. "Drowning bunnies is not like...". Another suggestion went, "Let it OD on heroin, he looks so scared, if you pay me $20 I wont suffocate it with dry ice". Glasses are not free in the land of dis-equity, someone walks blindly for monkey to see. Still, despite all of the farmville atrocities, the monkey got paid. Monkey got laid. Pretty soon monkey got a $ Chain and fathered several, a whole gang, whom he put through the finest jungle academy, taught by Stylus the famous NASA monkey astronaut whose life work was not in outer space but on the ground with lively fellers', giving tree fruits to the lowly forest dwellers, like Afromanius balheadius, who had all of his hairfeathers poked by jealous overcompensators from a different generation, not feeling his vibrations. "They just dont understand me and what I represent", I heard him remark during an especially frank conversation over some fermented corn drink brewed by the lone where?wolf. He stood tall when the chemical planes blanketed the fertile plains, the soil of the Peoples' Partitions. "I remember", he could barely speak proper American, a real old school reptile, "The sun used to shine bright, so bright... after the daily dustings doused downtown dreary doomsday dates were set". "Im ready for the apocalypse- rockin' it into the sunset", the Humans willed ignorance to the plight of the lesser animal, instead standing tall walking through the shopping mall. Still, the monkey sat in the trees at the edge of town, looking down, the interface between the developed, policed world and the undeniable wilderness that smothers it. Yes, the sun shines on the cities like the wilderness, but it does not absorb and feed the concrete streets, supposed to hold up the Humans feet, concrete asphalted tentatively fragile constructions of the human intervention. Although it is easy to say the sun has the loudest laugh, it too is but a vital piece to another system's funny smile But this time the sun was setting low in the sky to the south, determined to make its path back around. The winds of winter were waiting to the North, to the West, knowing whats best, ready to bring the much needed but unappreciated rains to soak the plains, the depleted soils full of synthetic boils and impurities ironically given to improve upon Nature's perfected plans. Most were too busy- drunk that is to pay much attention, worried about the next social convention, sexual situation. The Human's level of patience passed with the promotion of personal preoccupations as patriotic preservation. To look down, not at the ground but into an electronic screen meant to calibrate so clean to the designated, standardized level. The monkey, however could see from his tree the lights of the city night. Hear the rhythmic fluctuations steel vibrations of the calibrated machinery, each car, each light, each toilet and sink

flush to the preserve the status quo of today, of the only moment possible- for the time. Time passed slow or quickly depending on the observer, who if asking the robot man, the monkey's sensations do not exist, or more accurately do not threaten. There were even those looking down upon the planet from outer space, or "Alien" race. Forget to mention those imperceivable alternate dimensions. The monkey, E-$$$, tempted by the luxuries of a world where needs and wants are rearranged. A purely logical game where intuition is branded insane, and happiness increases with the consumer index. Joker remarked the street sales mantra, "Buy Low, Sell High". Kill-not, the transient oracle repeated what was whispered from lips to ears, even the moonlight strained to hear, "Buying two to get one free- still its something you will never need". But kill-not got his name from his inefficiency at providing even his own self with a proper meal after a lifetime as a hand miner in the heavy metal pits, where toxicity exists- both his curse and his gift. He could feel infinitely to the future and past space-time eras, speak Truth above all else in lightning flashes, but suffered malignant tumors boiling from his neck and face which was his disgrace. Hideous and outcast from the very existence he himself tried for years to force and fake, $$$ to make ends meet but destroying himself in the process. Left with a rotting corpse housing his clean conscience, no longer burdened with denial. The monkey was hypnotized, bright lights, seizure inducing multimedia projecting through even closed eyelids tight. Selling the farm for lavish bling he bought diamond rings, and other things.

Do not resist gravity unless you can swing from trees. "The heavy mass of the ground dwelling animals keeps the soil in place, from floating out to space", one particularly exuberant if not intelligent drone species retorted, clearly a lesson from the mandatory state culture indoctrination courses, that all children of interspecies, clinically altered or not, were required to take by their 6th birthday date. And then, and get this- as if all else was not enough already it started raining! Like the parched state did not need it. Still when I went into that center that day, big Geoff answered my offer of help with this, "Yeah you can help. You know Socrates? Bring some hemlock if you know Socrates!" Yeah I've heard of the guy. The winds blew hard from the east. The bamboo forest shook, the wind taking everything it could, rattling the atmosphere sending shock waves to the already terrified bugs. Terrific. Like clockwork, like linear dances the clouds broke, the sun shone, so it shimmered as it set to the South. Instinctively I looked to the opposite. A rainbow reflected scattered visible radiation, of eternal creation- to my eye. The monkey saw it too. As if, AS IF ONLY! the natural lunar cycles and weather recycling were my only teacher. Learned as the rise and fall of annual waterways. The river. The river that connects to the ocean, the tidal ocean which takes everything of terrestrial waste, give and take, making it new again. Simplifying things made complex by the logic of the oxygen loving, photosynthesizing few that "crawled out of the sea some 3 billion years ago", or so said the Textbook "We outGREW that existence for a reason", just as on earth the fungi rise from the soil too, to meet the sun . The sun which heats and cools a spinning earth each day, which perpetuates winds following the sun, which drags the water to towards the landforms to dry out and and bring rain to the parched soils and biosphere, completing the cycle which was only just begun! The primal energy source. Even the Textbook official agrees, a find, fine convergence of public and personal Truth. It is easy to understand, then, I know the monkey understands it too, yet from a different point of view. A different angle, a distant observer in a small notebook in which I was to write in, and she will come later to the very establishment of which I am but Patron. The master in a slaves role. A slave driving his slavemaster. So many side roles, so many...zzzzzzz PART TWO: Monkey meets Man The sun rose the next day to except all conventional predictions. The digital models had predicted more rain. You see, to the monkey man, he knows no separation such as the Human creates and accepts as fate. Monkey man does not go to work. Life is work. Monkey does not "practice a religion", instead of going to Church and worshiping in the same fashion at the same location the same day of the week at the same time, life is religion, it is not abstract, he can feel it within everything he is and could ever hope to be. Instead monkey man knows no separation from the eternal spirits, the natural pulse of all that is, all that was and all that could be, to an instant. For in this instant, this instance, which is eternal we have everything we need. You see the Human man, which I surely must consider myself, and monkey man, are not so different. Breathing the same air, drinking the same water, eating the same fruits of the earth, the prospering with the blessings and abundance of life. YET, at some point those sounds, the natural rhythmic sounds that surround and which is the creation of so many smaller pulses resonating- grew fainter to the Human ear, to the Human nose, to the Human tongue, the Human fingers, the Human. The Human began his (together with hers) language skills, suddenly, actively, creating his own atmosphere like never before, not needing the sound of the bird or the wind as mediums of understanding, replacing it with a narrowly, well defined code created by that fellow learned, wiser man. The monkey still feels when his fellow animal gets pounded to a pulp in a cruel death pet ritual done by Human as sacrifice for the upstairs cage dwelling reptile chose one. The other animals feel it too, their bones breaking as the crunch-crunch explodes into the damp, otherwise silent night, the acute screams of terror again dampened by the silence and stillness of night.

Equilibrium. For one to be free another must be enslaved, and this is part of the greater cycle, completing the circle's annual rotations from station to station, high to low, too few know. Time passed very quickly for a long time, leaving the monkey to wander and wonder, quickly making old friends and new enemies hovering on the brink. The brink between the incessant hammering of the machine city and the pulsing earth through cracks in streets - hovering on the fragile wall of modern accomplishment by the winds of an infinite complexity, expressed simply, unconditionally.

PART THREE: Monkey goes to the city Four winds do not require gratitude, no, they simply blow. driven by the underlying energy by which all connect. The ether, the ethereal. There is no tax assessed for the winds which bring rains and clear the sky, making all things new, constantly, forever, exemplified in this perfect moment which continues indefinitely. Even though the wall does exist, in its very concrete man made form giving the illusion of control to those within it, the air the monkey breathes is that same that the Human on the city street takes in, absorbs and exhales. The monkey can climb the wall from both sides. Not to mention that every single thing that is the product of Human engineering relies on the invaluable abundance of natural resources from beyond the walls constructed. After all is it not the same soil from which the Brassica grows that the monkey finds his home? His meal? Nevermind semantics- this is real life. The monkey realized this, when he found me one day a long way away, from home, both of ours. Funny that we should meet in such a circumstance, both on the edge of our known and comfortable limits. He got a lesson in pure physics when he needed to cross the road. Not just a highway. The interstate, one piece of a much larger transportation network connecting all of the rural to urban, the small towns to the BIG CITY. A place where petroleum is consumed in large quantities every moment by Humans, who sitting in their tiny, or HUGE boxcars would not know the first thing in how this magnificent piece of machinery operates, only that it does and requires more fuel which they input religiously to get from point A to point B, zipping by point C very quickly. The monkey saw a deer, dead, smashed corpse rotting on the margin of the road, all the while the safety standardized automobiles whizzed within inches, the operators obviously oblivious, de-

sensitized to such brutality by a mass media set on making good consumers, the production of their products dependent on such needless death and loss of compassion. The monkey saw this animal, and wandered onto the road, it was night time. A light ahead in the distance shown brilliantly and grew brighter with each second. It wasn't until one half second before the monkey was to be hit that the occupants in the vehicle saw the primate beast, spun the wheel real hard, took a severe right turn off the gravel shoulder, over the dense shrub before hitting a large sycamore tree, becoming yet another casualty of the interstate, joining all of the wasted animal and humans lives that such a system demands. This is how I met the monkey, for it was I who was in the car. Never mind the injuries that I sustained- glass through the forehead and four broken fingers, they were superficial compared to what could have happened and what often does. Our first reaction went to how to handle the situation. "Oh my god, everyone Ok? Shit! My car! What were you thinking?!!? My Car, so much money wasted... what do we do now?" While the rest were bickering, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a glimmer reflecting. Eyes in the darkness had caught other headlights, for now we were off the road, and for someone to stop and help would be a very rare act of kindness, everyone with somewhere to be this time of night... These eyes in the darkness, reflecting light to mine, creating a steady stream of communication between myself and this creature, not fear but interest attracts me and sustains my gaze. I left my Human companions, them still arguing, bickering, trying to banish the idea from their heads that this dark place pulses with their conversations, missing an excellenct opportunity for personal growth from a traumatic experience and just as quickly back into their old ways of thinking, the transcendence beyond their mental grasp. So many thoughts inside my mind, for this was not the first time I had experienced such clarity, where does this coincidence live I wondered? I could only come to the idea of one lucky dragon deciding fates for all who obligate themselves. That the Interstate would be the death of me, were I to continue on its death lanes of petroleum tar. Dazed. Stunned from the collision coinciding with death, but rearing into a bush at the last second, awakened to the awesome power of life, becoming one with the eyes of the night. At this point, the monkey had assumed my position with the Humans, and went away with them and their damaged vehicle. This left me in the dark of the forest canopy, stars on the same frequency resonating through my mind. What has happened? When was this written in the stars, and where? My regression to the primal being that resides in my core? At what point did the facade of this material world break down and begin decomposing solid matter- complex matrices broken down to simpler elements. Fractals. All sense of calendars and clocks vanished, only faint recollections in a sea of memories, all floating in the memory of the moon, the length of the Sun's pattern across the sky warming the land and creating winds which rush towards and against its gradient. Guided by the pulse of the insect and bird calls, waters, and the Sun low in the sky, sounding the beginning and end of each passing day. How do I survive in such wilderness, with nothing that I am so accustomed to? Homelessly dependent on the machine city, reciprocating its intense need of me and my productivity, where monopoly $$$ is the means needed to eat, I find myself in the forest where one must prove their worth, or die. Is this a continuation of a benevolent dream I am still having?

PART FOUR: Monkey finds home in the city The monkey, E-flo, Maestro to those jungle folks who adore him the most, was in. An independent player in the marketplace increasing capital at every step, stepping up marketing schemes dependent upon deceptions. "In this country marketing your product is more important than producing a good product, because in reality, once they've bought it, they can't change their minds", reads the Uncle Scam manual. Monies, materials, fast cars, he started selling drugs you know, went back on what he said before, brought his kids in from his tree, smuggled them into the city to serve his luxury, pimping his own family. No school for them, now that he had a taste of $$ on his lips, now they work street corners, and rob convenience store owners, pushing E's pills. E's medicinal herbs processed one time to yield fields and fields of substances not so fine, those that lead you to lose your mind, spend your last dime, asleep face first in street grime. You were high. But that monkey came up, sure enough, beat the man at his own games, building buildings held together tentatively by nails and concrete, but standing up for the moment in one piece, and hasn't that always been a reason complete! The jungle heart allowed him to read people, to understand, make the best connections, from the top of the political police and the board members, to the the youthful cooperatives, to the retired war veteran on the street corner, collecting spare change for his next meal of pharma. Pretty soon, I could see from outside the city walls, from a tree top. On the other side of the road, E-Mo'S face was plastered 50 feet high on billboards, his name across Bus windows and television commercials, T-shirts. "This simian brother is a perfect example of what is possible with our flawless united democracy of capitalism system, a non-human species overcoming his genetic deficiencies to inspire a generation of a nation". Or at least thats what the T.V. advertisement said, promoting his (E-$$$) speaking tour. Inspirational.

"Take me, a humble forest dweller. I was able to block out my primal instincts to reach a more socially refined state, joining the modern technological world", he was quoted in one of his many flattering biographies. This was far before he know the true price of his chosen path. Disgusted, I knew better. Sure, there was something to be said about some personal initiative designed to improve how you live, but success in a morally corrupting game leaves a cold heart and aching brain. Chronic pain. How could he trade in the calming silence of the late morning sunshine in a spring meadow? Disgruntled, I knew the strain was taking its toll. The stress of politics, and policing policies was wearing down the monkey from the inside out, all while I grew anew from the outside in. As his face aged with toxic stress mine became supremely refreshed, my pure environment cleansing all my imperfections coming from the jaundiced urban environment. How could the monkey live in that asphalt jungle? Where one must always wear shoes just so that their feet do not become infected. I was prospering from the bounty of the county, the natural world that sustains all, and me the same, using the most simple, basic elements to create my complex structure. From my perspective it seems so simple. The monkey man, E-flo just being the latest in a long line - was lured to organize with other monkeys in a fashion that excludes all other animal activity, justifying an entirely new hierarchy of power, based not on innate ability but adherence to an entirely anthro-centric paradigm. All of this done of course for the greater luxury of his. Monkey man no longer need do his own work, he can hire, or obligate other lesser monkey men to do increasingly more work for his own benefit. "Let us build a shelter so none of us gets wet by the winter rains." A brand new monkey house. What fuedal lord ever listened to the cries of his poor, hungry, reasoned folk, the Historian, the town's folk? Instead it is the masters of commerce, of industry, of war that capture the leader's ear, the Politician Policing fellow man, and monkey. The freedoms monkey man found fell through his fingers faster than monkey sand. Where are you E-flo? Where'd you go? Lost in the jungle without a way home. And that is how the story goes for poor E-flo, quickly to the top and faster back down you go.

PART FIVE: Monkey returns Me, I have chosen a different reality. An existence undetectable to Gross Domestic Product, but significant none the less. Wholly detectable to mother nature. Pacha Mama knows. No wonder the theologians, the priests were worried. Their religion was now passing back to the earth, re-cycling into the soil from which it sprung, its best fruits already fallen, rejoining the seed bank breeding strong genetic stock, lying dormant until the right moment to yet again spring upwards. Levity. A new growth is rising now, part of me, and pieces of monkey man. Rising above the soil partly recognizable as our former selves, but somehow an entirely new creation, much more than the sum of our parts. A spiritual being radiating from within a material body. Nearly unrecognizable to the former, trained, and dedicated master. And what of researching biological potential, becoming perceptive to planetary motions and bacterial communities. Relating and harmonizing internal to external environments. Integrating spiritual power which exists latent in the environment, and creating each moment. When away from that traffic, those boxed lanes of existence, it is easy to hear- to feel the natural rhythms flood and ebb. When letting go of muscles and tissues and structural connections, the energies resonate much louder and it is possible to transcend the default forms or structure. This is why i must retreat from the developed world to the wild. The Wilderness, the Wildlands. It is here that a Human such as such as ( ) can communicate with the Earth without the contempt of the well landscaped landscapes. For you see, the land is not scaped well enough for some. After all, "It is some that control most", as the popular generational story goes. This is what E-flo taught me. That as much as I worked and worked to obtain modern material success, I would be missing something so powerful and so simple, and so plainly in front of my eyes, everywhere I look. The thin layer of perceived business of importance that clouds the Human's everyday life only barely covers what lies below, something so beautifully hidden but the very structure and fundamentals upon which modern life is built. And with this new realization, a new year comes. The death to an illusion of material wealth, of celebrity status, and sports hero emulation, springs forth the life in tune with Nature's vibrant, pulsing systems, providing for all. The future! Progress! E-flo, myself are reintegrated back into the very soil from which we came, providing the essential elements to create yet newer forms of life, new bodies. Now a part of the past. But, there only ever was the present, so how could there ever be anything different? Quantifying perceived differences, only highlights commonalities. The presence present persists, stretching from the beginning of one end to the end of another beginning, connecting the circle at this very moment, this instant. The instinctual future never happened, the past never will occur, we have got it all right now! This, which is the most beautful thing to a troubled young mind of mine. Everybody, Human, Faunal, Floral, Fungal, Elemental, all coming together to create a perfect unity. dynamic states coming together to relate, we call this life. For the relationships formed are what allows experience to occur. And with these realizations, Monkey man and E-flo, me caught between both, disintegrate. Decomposition of important structures into much simpler forms - nutrients stores for the many mores that surely will come.