He tans into burning while the opening fanfare to "Peaches en Regalia" flows over him, the bugle call for a hippie army that marched at the peak of the American parabola, that moment when physics held its breath to allow levitation, a small reward before the descent. The hippies knew it then, Maggot Boy Johnson thinks; they couldn't build it into words but they could feel it; a floating in the stomach as history shifted direction. They stopped, hey, what's that sound, and knew that the spiny skyscrapers reflected in the river, the chasms of concrete, the wide streets and sidewalks, the power lines cutting into the hills and mountains above missile silos, the highways drawing lines across the blank plains under enormous skies, the pupil of God's eye, would be the ruins that their grandchildren wandered among, the reminders that once there was always water in the faucet, there was electricity all the time, and America was prying off the shackles of its past. The vision opened up to them and winked out again, and those it blinded staggered through their lives unable to see anything else, while the rest of them wondered if they had only dreamed it. . Brian Francis Slattery
About This Quote

The author's words convey a sense of impending doom in the immediate future, a feeling similar to that of a mass mutiny or a public uprising. It is a sense that goes beyond mere instinct, and with it comes the realization that even in the darkest moments something good is going to happen. This is a feeling that was present in the '60s when people were protesting against the Vietnam War and was present in the '80s when people were protesting against the Reagan Administration.

Source: Liberation: Being The Adventures Of The Slick Six After The Collapse Of The United States Of America

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  1. He tans into burning while the opening fanfare to "Peaches en Regalia" flows over him, the bugle call for a hippie army that marched at the peak of the American parabola, that moment when physics held its breath to allow levitation, a small reward before...
  2. His voice, what he said, remains, and it is here, all of those voices are here, in what I am telling you. If in the beginning there was the word, then perhaps, with humility at the smallness of our powers, in words a small part...
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