About the Author
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Woody Allen’s prolific career as a comic, writer,
and filmmaker has now spanned more than five decades. He writes
frequently for The New Yorker and is the author of Without
Feathers, Getting Even, and Side Effects, among other books.
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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To Err Is Human—to Float, Divine
ping for air, my life passing before my eyes in a series of
wistful vignettes, I found myself suffocating some months ago
under the tsunami of junk mail that cascades through the slot in
my door each morning after kippers. It was only our Wagnerian
cleaning woman, Grendel, hearing a muffled falsetto from beneath
myriad art-show invitations, charity squeezes, and pyrite contest
jackpots I’d hit that extricated me with the help of our
Bugsucker. As I was carefully filing the new postal arrivals
alphabetically in the paper shredder, I noticed, amongst the
profusion of catalogues that hawked everything from bird feeders
to monthly deliveries of sundry drupe and hesperidium, there was
an unsolicited little journal, banner-lined Magical Blend.
Clearly ed at the New Age market, its articles ranged in topic
from crystal power to holistic healing and psychic vibrations,
with tips on achieving spiritual energy, love versus stress, and
exactly where to go and what forms to fill out to be
reincarnated. The ads, which seemed scrupulously articulated to
insulate against the unreasonableness of Bunco Squad malcontents,
presented Therapeutic Ironisers, Vortex Water Energizers, and a
product called al Grobust designed to implement volumewise
madam’s Cavaillons. There was no shortage of psychic advice
either, from sources such as the “spiritual intuitive” who
double-checks her ins with “a consortium of angels named
Consortium Seven,” or a babe ecdysiastically christened Saleena,
who offers to “balance your energy, awaken your and attract
abundance.” Naturally, at the end of all these field trips to the
center of the soul, a small emolument to cover stamps and any
other expenses the guru may have incurred in another life is in
order. The most startling persona of all, however, has to be the
“founder and divine leader of the Hathor Ascension Movement on
Planet Earth.” Known to her followers as Gabrielle Hathor, a
self-procled goddess who is, according to her copywriter, “the
fullness of source manifested in human form,” this West Coast
icon tells us, “There is a quickening of Karmic feedback. . . .
Earth has entered a spiritual winter which will last 426,000
Earth years.” Mindful of how rough a long winter can be, Ms.
Hathor has started a movement to teach beings to ascend to
“higher frequency dimensions,” presumably where they can get out
more and play a little golf.
“Levitation, instantaneous translocation, omniscience, abil- ity
to materialize and dematerialize and so on become part of one’s
normal abilities,” the come-hither spiel lays on the unwary with
a trowel, procling that “from these higher frequency
dimensions, the ascended being can perceive the lower frequencies
while those on the lower frequencies cannot perceive the higher
dimensions.”
There is a fervid endorsement by someone named Pleiades
MoonStar—a name that would cause no end of consternation for me
if I were told at the last minute it belonged to my brain surgeon
or pilot. Acolytes in Ms. Hathor’s movement must submit to “a
humiliating procedure” as part of a routine to dissolve their
egos and get their frequencies jacked up. Actual cash payments
are frowned upon, but for a little abject fealty and productive
labor one can score a bed and a dish of mung beans while
either gaining or losing consciousness.
I bring all this up because coincidentally, later that same day I
was emerging from Hammacher Schlemmer, laid waste by obsessive
indecision over whether to buy a computerized duck press or the
world’s finest portable guillotine, when I bumped like the
Titanic into an old iceberg I had known in college, Max
Endorphine. Plump in midlife, with the eyes of a cod and sporting
a toupee upholstered with sufficient pile to create a trompe
l’oeil pompadour, he pumped my hand and launched into tales of
his recent good fortune.
“What can I tell you, boychick, I hit it big. Got in touch with
my inner spiritual self, and from there on it was City.”
“Can you elaborate?” I queried, registering for the first time
his natty bespoke ensemble and advanced-tumor-sized pinkie ring.
“I guess I shouldn’t really be jawing with someone on a lower
frequency, but since we go way back—”
“Frequency?”
“I’m talking dimensions. Those of us in the upper octaves are
taught not to squander y ions on mortal troglodytes of
which you qualify—no offense. Not that we don’t study and
appreciate the lower forms—thanks to Leeuwenhoek, if you get my
meaning.” Suddenly, with a falcon’s instinct for prey, Endorphine
turned his head toward a long-legged blonde in a micro-miniskirt
straining to locate a taxi.
“Clock the apparition with the state-of-the-art pout,” he said,
his salivary glands shifting into third.
“Must be a centerfold,” I piped, feeling the sudden onset of
heatstroke, “judging from her see-through blouse.”
“Watch this,” Endorphine said, whereupon he took a deep breath
and began rising off the ground. To the amazement of both myself
and Miss July, he was levitating a foot above Fifty-seventh
Street in front of Hammacher Schlemmer. Searching for wires, the
sweet young thing brought her show closer.
“Hey, how do you do that?” she purred.
“Here. Here’s my address,” Endorphine said. “I’ll be home tonight
after eight. Drop by. I’ll have you off your feet in no time.”
“I’ll bring the Petrus,” she cooed, stuffing the logistics of
their rendezvous into the abyss of her cleavage, and wiggled off
as Endorphine slowly descended to ground level.
“What gives?” I said. “Are you Houdini?”
“Oh, well,” he sighed benevolently, “since I’m deigning to
converse with practically a paramecium, I may as well give you
the whole schmear. Let’s repair to the Stage Deli and decimate
some schnecken while I hold court.” With that there was an
audible pop and Endorphine vanished. I sucked in my breath and
clasped my hand to my open mouth like a startled Gish sister.
Seconds later he reappeared, contrite.
“Sorry. I forgot you bottom-feeders can’t dematerialize and
translocate. My error. Let’s just hoof it.” I was still pinching
myself when Endorphine began his tale.
“OK,” he said. “Flashback six months prior, when Mrs.
Endorphine’s little boy Max was at emotional ducks and drakes
over a series of tribulations, which, if you count my misplaced
beret, topped Job’s. First, this fortune cookie from Taiwan I was
tutoring in anatomical hydraulics eighty-sixes me for an
apprentice pie maker, then I get sued to the tune of many dead
presidents for backing my Jaguar through a Christian Science
Reading Room. Add to that my one son from a previous connubial
holocaust gives up his lucrative law practice to become a
ventriloquist. So here I am, blue and funky, scouring the town
for a raison d’être, a spiritual center as it were, when
suddenly, out of the ether, I come across this ad in the latest
issue of Vibes Illustrated. A spa type of joint that liposuctions
off your bad karma, raising you to a higher frequency wherein you
can at last hold sway over nature à la Faust. As a rule I’m too
savvy to bite on a scam like that, but when I dig the CEO is an
actual goddess in human form, I figure what could be bad? And
there’s no charge. They don’t take dough. The system’s based on
some variation of slavery, but in return you get these crystals,
which empower you, and all the Saint-John’s-wort you can f
up. Oh, I’m leaving out she humiliates you. But it’s part of the
therapy. So her minions frenched my bed and affixed an ass’s tail
to the back of my trousers unbeknownst to me. Sure I was a
laughingstock for a while, but let me tell you, it dissolved my
ego. Suddenly I re- alized I had lived in previous lives—first as
a simple burgomaster and then as Lucas Cranach the Elder . . . or
no, I forget, maybe it was the kid. Anyhow, the next thing I
know, I wake up on my crude pallet and my frequency is in the
stratosphere. I got like this nimbus around my occiput and I’m
omniscient. I mean right off I hit the double at Belmont and
within a week I draw crowds every time I show up at the Bellagio
in Ve. If I’m ever unsure about a nag or whether to hit or
stick at blackjack, there’s this consortium of angels I tap into.
I mean, just ’cause someone’s got wings and is made of ectoplasm
don’t mean they can’t handicap. Clock this wad.”
Endorphine extracted several bale-sized bundles of
thousand-dollar bills from each pocket.
“Oops, excuse me,” he said, fumbling to retrieve some rubies that
had fallen out of his jacket when he produced the cornucopia of
greenbacks.
“And she doesn’t take any remuneration for this service?” I
inquired, my heart taking wing like a peregrine falcon.
“Well, you know, that’s how it is with avatars. They’re all big
sports.”
That night, despite a welter of imprecations from the distaff
side plus a quick call by her to the firm of Shmeikel and Sons to
check if our pre-nup covered the sudden onset of dementia
praecox, I found myself skying west to the Sublime Ascension
Center with its divinity in residence, a vision in Frederick’s of
Hollywood named Galaxie Sunstroke. Bidding me enter the shrine
that dominated her compound, an abandoned farm curiously
resembling the Spahn ranch of Manson lore, she put down her emery
board and got comfortable on a divan.
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