Bruce and I arrived in Dallas yesterday morning, and as soon as the baggage carousel delivered the all too familiar blue bag being lugged around the world, I grabbed it and pulled out our special outfits for the day. I put mine on in the bathroom, and emerged in my emerald green unitard, with footies, gloves and a hood with a cut out mask, with my pink travelin’ dress balled up in my hand. Bruce took much longer, putting his jeans, sweater and motorcycle jacket on over the silver unitard. The hood of his liquid mercury suit hung loosely like a cowl neck jersey, more fitting for a 70s housewife. He shoved his hands in his pockets, hiding the gloves, and walked with his head down, ball cap in place. I walked up and started to scream. “Nobody cares! Nobody cares!” Bruce remained steadfastly self conscious as he walked faster and faster to get away from me. However strange, it was true. Nobody did care. Not in the least. Passengers being picked up by taxis and minivans didn’t even give me a second look. I was completely encased head to toe in metallic green lycra and nobody cared.
One man pushing a baggage cart curtly remarked, “She must be from California,” which is true, but I didn’t see what that had to do with the unitard. We left with our guide to Dallas, Craig, in his SUV to Dealey Plaza, where I had planned an impromptu alien run up the infamous grassy knoll, but before we reached the site, I spotted the Conspiracy Museum. We had to go there first.
I am obsessed with the JFK assassination for many reasons. This is where the myth of America the Beautiful began to unravel, the end of the idea that everything was perfect here, that we were really living in Camelot, the best place on earth, where democracy really did exist, and all people were created equal. The civil rights movements had seen some minor victories, and there was a continual economic growth, an abundance of wealth that we had never seen before, with lower classes rising to a burgeoning middle class. The only true enemy was a vague one – communism, which the average layperson would never truly intellectually pick apart and investigate and decide whether or not they believed in its principles. Commie was just a buzzword. Something you didn’t want to be. It just was anti-American.
You’d never seen a more photogenic First Family with their youth and good looks. Jack and Jackie were sensational in their roles as fairy tale King and Queen of The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. I don’t know what happened, as I was not alive then and my parents had yet to arrive in this country. All the history books seem to tell a different story. One thing that all of them agreed upon was that fateful day in November 1963, the day that JFK was assassinated, we as Americans lost our collective innocence, or better yet, naivete. It was the introduction of violence and chaos into our culture. Not that the country hadn’t witnessed it in the past, nor had this been our first successful presidential assassination, but the publicized nature of it, that technology had advanced to the point where information could be shot across the world with the speed of a lone assassin’s bullet, that the public was forced into viewing the graphic scenes of the heroic president being shot down in his prime next to his pink pillbox hat dream girl, over and over, had the effect of turning JFK in to a messianic figure, more Christ than Christ, because even on Calvary, there was not up to the minute coverage with Walter Cronkite.
It was also the introduction of distrust, a sentiment that had only before been embraced by radicals and beatniks, and the realization that all was not well. If anyone should be kept safe it should be the President, and he got it right in the head. There was no longer safety, as fear entered into the public arena, a presence that has been controlling us, the real leader of not only our country, but now the entire world.
The Conspiracy Museum is across the parkway from the Sixth Floor Museum and its exhibits are far more intriguing and believable than anything at the former book depository. The curator is a convincing and generous man who was so excited that I had such a great interest inwhat he had dedicated his life to, finding out the truth, that he showed me a new digitally mastered frame by frame tape of the Zapruder film and explained that, between frames 213-225, that Oswald could not possibly have acted alone, if Oswald were even involved at all. I purchased several hundred dollars of rare books that had been out of print for nearly forty years, information suppressed by whomever for whatever reason.He also gave me the t-shirt that he used to line the back of the driver’s seat of his car. I am not sure why he did this. Also, he never mentioned the fact that I was wearing the green unitard with hood and gloves and footies and was accompanied by another person with the same outfit on, but in silver. He never said a thing about it. He just accepted us as we were. He didn’t ask. He didn’t care. He just wanted to be informative and helpful. There is a sprawling mural underneath the Conspiracy Museum which curves around several hundred feet depicting three gunshots in abstract repetitive images, then dark, Escher-like drawings of a post- apocalyptic society, turning corners into surreal portraits of JFK, RFK and MLK. In the center of the labyrinth, is a glassed in wall containing creepy typewritten letters from James Earl Ray from prison, which makes no real sense, except that they are of particular value to me because I always forget his name and don’t know why it is not as familiar as Lee Harvey Oswald and that whenever I ask who killed Martin Luther King Jr., someone inevitably says “James Earl Jones” because people are that stupid.
We ended up staying there far longer than we intended, and then we had sort of lost the desire to run up the grassy knoll with our unitards on. It just seemed anticlimactic. Conspiracy theorists are chatty and sometimes will not even take a breath and you cannot get a chance to say – “Well it was nice to.. Thanks a lot.. I really appreciate the time,” because they have so much information that has been jamming their airwaves for so long that they will do anything to get it out.
Thank God for them though because the scary thing is they are usually totally right and if they seem crazy, it is only the fact that the powers that be have made them seem that way. For the truth is the only thing that beats fear in the war of all things and fear, which has a lot going for it these days, is practically on a winning streak, and fear will not go down without a fight.
I am really glad that we got to go to the Conspiracy Museum. If you find yourself in Dealey Plaza, I suggest you check it out. Tell the curator the aliens sent you.
