THE PAINTED BIRD
In a novel by Jerzy Kosinski called “The Painted Bird,” the narrator comes upon an old bunker where he uncovers a sea of rats consuming one another. What a metaphor for the business world—“The Rules of the Bunker,” the vermin of competition. Anyone who blinks in the bunker is eaten to the bone. And so on with the game.
The film making thing wasn’t about making a film, it was about raising money. We had to get to point A before we could go to point B. And there’s a mighty long alphabet that we had to go through and put the letters together to spell words, like “money.” Yeah. And it takes money to make money. So Brent gave me a lift up North to Washington, DC, where I confronted the man Mr J who had bought my business. He told me he was going to sue me because the person he hired to take over the area he took over from me wasn’t doing the job; naturally it was my fault, since he could afford lawyers and I couldn’t—The Rules of the Bunker. I’m a bit of an idiot when it comes to such things so I attempted to follow one of those silly bullshit rules of successful people and offered a win/win proposition. I took fifty cents on a dollar. I let him have fifteen thousand dollars in exchange for the same amount, just so I wouldn’t have to waste any more time with him. I needed some money to raise the money to make a film about blood. I had opened up an entire area for that man’s product, bottled water from Hot Springs, Arkansas. I built a business from nothing so I could maintain independence and continue my writing. But it wasn’t independence–the business took over my life. The supplier I dealt with, the one actually responsible for the area, kept me tied up by controlling product and price whenever I got a little bit ahead.
I thought I saw a way out and I took it—selling him a good business with which he was very familiar in exchange for money to finance more education. We had negotiated a fair deal so he could keep the territory, and all the boy had to do was deliver. I was on my way to follow what I thought to be my true path, that burning passion of art. I was shedding my skin like a snake and the businessman still had me by the tail. While I had been involved in the business I had given it my all and created a customer base where there had been none and he never wanted to let me escape. I was still drowning in a business that I had nothing to do with anymore, still under the control of a man who had tried to control me for many years.
I needed to escape. It had been bad enough that because of his ineptness that I had to divert my attention from my education and work full time when the promised payments had stopped. I had let down my guard at school, altered my focus because of the work load. I couldn’t afford to let him continue controlling my ability to act. This time the project would die if I didn’t come up with some money. It was too good a story to pass up. He played my weakness and felt proud that he had got me. It was the game of business. And so it goes. But it didn’t end there. He rubbed my nose in it. He gloated over his victory.
A week after I cut the deal, which essentially gave him back fifteen thousand dollars and he still wasn’t obligated to pay me all at once, the relative running the business went out and bought a new motorcycle. The kid should have been fired, and he was rewarded instead for doing a bad job. Let it go—let it go—let it go. I learned that in practicing tai-chi. I was ready to accept this wonderful concept. Oh, what the hell, I wished him harm on this physical plane. I channeled all of my anger, channeled my thoughts to make him suffer, and felt good about it. I felt no remorse when the boy died in a motorcycle accident. Ironically the boy had been passing a municipal Ocean City water truck and hit a Mercedes head on, a particular type of car that Mr. J owned. I had become a cosmic killer—so much for compassion. Like the American eagle with olive branches in its talons on the right and arrows in its talons on the left. Kindness should never be taken for weakness, and the arrogant dragon is sure to fall. Blood is thicker than water. And I really never did anything at all. And the bunker works in mysterious ways.