Closer To God
VI
Iron Snake
I grabbed the extended hand, going into a double wrist-lock for additional support. Burt’s arm retracted like a hydraulic ram coming up out of a ditch, and I was pulled straight to the top step of the car. I stuck my head out into the increasing wind as the train accelerated out of the sharp curve. I was the last aboard. A well-groomed conductor retracted the stairs, and then stood looking at us as if viewing zoo specimens. We were at the end of the last car. He blocked the aisle without seeming to do so. I produced our tickets, which he examined, clipped twice and pointed forward with, before returning them to my hand.
We’d waited an hour for the train under Ficus trees, called Mugumo locally, that lined the tracks, with an assortment of natives impatient to clamber aboard with us. Apparently, once aboard, the conductors charged a lower, negotiated price, than could be had at the ticket station.
Our First Class sleeping car was located just beyond the dining car. Most of the overnight train configuration was spent on Fourth Class Fare, which meant four bunks to a room. Burt and I had only two, the extra space taken up by a bench seat with a long private window.
We made our way down the aisle, situated along the left windowed wall of the car. The only cars with center aisles were the dining and day-seat cars. The creak of wood and clicking of wheels were comforting sounds of security. The room was a welcome haven from events of the day. At least it was until I looked at the door. I moved past it, raising one hand to stop Burt. We stood on each side of the door looking at the holes around the handle. Small bore bullet holes. The kind slow, sub-sonic silenced rounds make when they enter wood.
I looked at Burt. Neither of us brought out any weaponry, although there was nobody in the corridor with us. There would be no one inside the room, which I confirmed by pushing the now unlockable door open with my foot. It swung wide, allowing us to see every inch of the space. No one waited because they would have been waiting inside an inescapable trap, in the event of problems. We were up against pros, who wouldn’t expose themselves to the whimsy of chance unless they had to.
I went around the inside of the room, poking my finger into holes on the far side wall and then the frames of our bunk beds.
“Why’d they shoot out the lock? The doors don’t have keys. You can only lock them from the inside.” Burt asked, pulling the bottom bunk down from the wall with a thud, and then sitting atop the mattress.
“Not anymore,” I answered. “Kind of gives me the idea that we’re gonna have visitors later, and they don’t even care if we know ahead of time.”
“Cheeky bastards,” Burt sighed. “Why they treating us like citizens?”
Citizens are regular people. People who have no knowledge of intelligence work, guns, pyrotechnics, or real violence. We call ourselves, and others like us, players. Once you are a player you can never be a real citizen again. Most of us think we can, but in truth, it just can’t be done. “Paranoia bites deep….” the song goes.
“Maybe that’s all the intel they have. Maybe we’re just a hit to them. Maybe they don’t have a formal organization behind them,” I mused, taking a place on the bench seat. The scenery going by was the outskirts of Southern Nairobi. Broken blocks, tile and brick, mixed in with metal sheets in a state of angled falling rust everywhere. And dust. Tons of gray dust runneled through with dark rivulets of muddy water. And native peoples everywhere. Three stone fires sending up hundreds of single plum smoke signals wherever I looked.
Our door flew open. My left hand slipped straight into left front pocket, the forty-five bearing on the door open through the cloth of my trousers. A woman stood in the door.
“Evening mates,” she said, loudly and cheerfully, her rough but attractive face broken nearly in half by a huge smile.
“Hi,” Burt mumbled.
My hand relaxed out of my pocket. I was staring at an ‘Earth Mother,’ as we term them. Young women, mostly from England or Australia, some from America, who come over to Africa and then wander about the countries in their comfortable boots. They invariably wear shorts, long sleeve shirts and carry packs that have to weigh more than seventy pounds. Their lack of fear and sense of adventure has always impressed us.
“We got wine if you got an opener,” she stated, with a great laugh.
I was taken aback for a few seconds. An Earth Mother without a Swiss Army knife? I couldn’t picture it. Then I realized we were being invited over for social reasons. The bottle-opener was cover.
“Sure,” I responded, assuming that Burt had more tools behind the padding of his multi-purpose coat.
“Americans?” the woman asked.
We didn’t answer.
“I know from the accent,” she went on, turning to lead us to her room, as both of us had risen to our feet. “’Hi,’ like ‘Hey’ is strictly American. Then there’s the ‘sure’ comment. Another dead giveaway.”
She was Australian, I knew, from her own heavy accent, but I didn’t reply, only following her two berths down the aisle, where another door was open.
“Ever go see the Flamingos,” she inquired, but not waiting for an answer. “At that lake outside of town American tourists like to go to? Down there they always say the same thing when they see the birds: ‘Oh my God, they’re so pink.” She laughed heartily. I had to laugh too. Her impersonation of an American, totally over done, had been vividly descriptive and funny.
We filed into the room. The woman closed the door behind us, engaging the lock with a loud click. There were three other women in the room, all heavily tanned, all smiling broadly. I was humorously glad that I was armed. Burt produced his own Swiss knife, bottle-opener extended. He went to work on a bottle.
“Four of you in a two-bed First Class room?” I inquired.
“Sleeping bags,” the woman named Wendy, who’d invited us in, answered. “First Class room is two hundred shillings less than a four bed Fourth Class.” I marveled, as that amount of local currency was worth about three bucks, and then took a seat on the floor, my back to the outer wall so I could face the locked door. We’d already had a lesson in just how secure those were.
We drank two bottles of red wine. The label read ‘Terpenja Garnacha,” which I knew was Spanish, and surprisingly, not that cheap. Burt and I nursed ours in paper cups, knowing that there were other players aboard who’d have to be dealt with at some point in the night.
“They call this train the Lunatic Express, you know,” Wendy commented, her voice beginning to slur. “There was a lot of opposition to its being built by the British in the eighteen hundreds,” she slurred on.
“Iron snake,” Burt stated, speaking for the first times since we’d entered the cabin. We all looked at him. “Its what the natives call the train,” he followed, his expression showing surprise at our rapt attention. “Kikuyu. The natives are mostly Kikuyu, not Masai,” he finished, almost guiltily, eyeing the remaining wine in his cup.
I couldn’t believe that I had heard correctly. My formal education was in ethnology. Cultural Anthropology they used to call it, before they wanted everyone to think it was all about the study of fish or bugs. I understood the origins and interaction of the cultures in Kenya. I simply could not believe that a Knuckle-dragger, especially a huge dumb-looking one like Burt, would know anything about such things.
“Where the hell did you go to school?” I asked him, without thinking.
“Thornton Fractional,” he replied, proudly. I knew it to be a high school located somewhere in South Chicago. I didn’t know why I expected some center of higher education to come out of his mouth, but I had.
“You two don’t even know each other? Wendy inquired. “We thought you were companions.” The women all laughed, while Burt’s face grew red.
“I’m not gay,” he said, his voice small amid the raucous sounds filling the room around us.
“So, are you married?” Wendy asked me, directly, her first two words coming out as one.
I said I was.
“All the good ones…and all that,” she replied, then went on, “What’s her name?”
“Joan,” I answered, not having a clue as to why I lied, or used that name.
Burt almost laughed out load, held back only by the angry frown I sent across the room at him.
“Gotta use the loo,” Wendy said, unlocking the door. The other women paid full attention to Burt while she was gone, he having indicated that he was single. I presumed that they were merely practicing their skills, as Burt and I were a good fifteen years older than any of them.
Wendy re-entered the room. “Some Bogans down at your place,” she stated, offhandedly, before being surprised by Burt’s instant rise from the floor.
“What’s a Bogan?” he asked, opening the door a fraction, then drawing out his suppressed automatic. I joined him, the AMT Hardballer in my left hand, pointed down. The room went silent and still, the sounds of the train seeming to grow louder with each passing second.
“What have we got?” I whispered.
Burt held up one finger, then pointed aft, toward the dining car. His finger then tapped his own forehead.
“Okay, out you go. I’ll give you ten minutes.” I checked my wrist, but there was no Omega there. I cursed.
His gun disappeared. He was out the door and gone, seemingly more smoothly and quickly than a man his size could move. I slid the forty-five back into my pocket, then turned to face the women. They sat frozen, one with a cup of wine halfway to her lips. I slid down the door, sitting with my back to it.
“I wont stay long, just until Burt gets back. You’ll never see us again, once we hit Mombasa,” I said, my voice soft but flat.
“Mombasa,” Wendy replied, her voice no longer slurring. “It means ‘Battle City’ in Nandi,” she said, matter-of-factly. I didn’t reply, instead waiting for the inevitable question. It came, but not in the form I expected.
“Who are the others?” Wendy inquired.
“We don’t know,” I answered, truthfully. “They came at us in Nairobi because of something that happened in Mombasa. So we’re going there to find out. They don’t have good intentions.”
“That wasn’t a normal kind of gun, the one your friend has,” Wendy stated.
“We’ve seen a lot of guns on our Walkabout. That one’s not normal,” she repeated.
I had nothing to say. I didn’t care about lying to the Aussies, but I could see no reason to add anything I didn’t have to, other than about Joan being my wife, and I couldn’t understand what had made me say that in the first place.
“He’s the killer, so what does that make you?” Wendy asked, the other women opening a third bottle of the wine, as if they commonly spent time in enclosed spaces with gun-toting hitmen.
I again did not answer, setting my cup aside.
“You’ve drunk our wine. We’ve taken you in. You owe us something,” she said, slowly, with quiet expressive meaning.
I looked at all four of them, trying to decide what to say. If there was a code for such encounters, then Wendy was right. Our taking up with them had, at the least, saved a potentially violent confrontation, which might not have worked to our advantage. And she had warned us. I took out the wad of local currency and peeled off two bills.
“Two thousand shillings,” I intoned, putting the money in front of Wendy’s feet, since she made no move to accept it with her hand.
“More,” she said, with no smile on her face or in her voice.
I took another bill from the roll, but she held out her hand.
“Enough money. Tell us more.” She pulled her hand back, then filled her cup to the brim with red wine.
I sighed and put the roll back in my pocket. “We’re agents. It doesn’t matter what kind of agents. One of us got killed in Mombasa. Burt and I came to redress that loss, but nothing when right. When I inquired, these guys, who we don’t know, came at us. Shooting. We can’t go back and we can’t go forward until we know more, which is why were going down to where we lost that agent.” I finished, hoping that my explanation would be enough.
“Can’t exactly go back to your berth, now can you?” one of the other women said.
I had no answer. The woman was correct in her assumption. Unless I could be certain that none of our pursuers were on the train, it would be very risky to stay in the berth we’d booked. But it wouldn’t be any safer elsewhere on the train, unless it was in a berth nobody knew about. Like the one I was in.
“Since Burt isn’t married, he can stay with me, if he doesn’t mind the hard floor,” the woman went on.
“What’s your name,” I asked her.
“Ruthie,” she answered. “Ruthie Jorgensen,” she fluffed her bright blond hair, as if to indicate the obviousness of her Scandinavian heritage, then went on, “but they call me Dingo, because I don’t talk much.”
“Well, that’s more than kind of you Dingo, but Burt’s much older than you. Women don’t take to men like us, and they usually have better judgment than to marry us,” I warned her.
“Except for Joan, that is,” Wendy said, drinking her whole cup of wine down, before going for another.
“I’m not married, since we’re trying to talk truth here. I lied, to fit in better."
"Joan," I said, and then I paused. I could not minimize Joan, “Joan’s a real woman, but with somebody else. And yes, you’ve shared your wine, your room and your friendship with us. That deserves something, which is what I’m trying to give you. Our problems are not your problems, and our problems are very serious.”
“Than you can sleep in my bunk,” Wendy said. “I mean, since your not really married.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Far from rejecting us, the women were welcoming us into their lives, at least while we were all aboard the train.
“Listen to me. We lie for a living. Violence is our stock and trade. We’re not good men. We’re just tools, guided around out here by people who don’t necessarily have the best interests of humanity at heart.”
“Is that part the lying?” Dingo asked, her face serious. I massaged my face with both hands. I had never encountered Earth Mothers, except in passing, and I was finding the experience frustrating and difficult to deal with. I also noted, when I was done talking, that the two thousand shilling notes were no longer on the floor. Wendy smiled, as if in thanks. I wondered, by the time the train hit Mombasa, whether Burt or I would have any currency left between us.
There was a very soft single knock on the door. I felt it rather than heard it.
The bad guys would not be knocking, and there was also no way they could know which cabin we were in. I stood and opened the door. Burt slipped in, and then took his place near Dingo where he’d originally sat.
“What’d you find?” I asked him.
Burt looked at me, then at the women, then back at me, without speaking.
“They’re in,” I told him. “We’re staying with them. Don’t ask how or why. Talk to me.”
With an expression of reservation written across his face, Burt talked. “They had a Fourth Class room let. There were three of them, all Caucasian. They decided that it was in their best interest,” Burt stopped, looking around the silent room carefully, “to leave the train before we got to Mombasa.”
“This is a non-stop,” Wendy stated, analytically.
“Any blood? Clean-up? Disturbance?” I asked, ignoring her.
“No. They were in the last car. I popped the emergency latches on their window, and out they went. Had some duct tape, so the window won’t flap, or anything like that.”
“You made them jump from the train?” Wendy asked, obviously stunned. “But the train is going a hundred kilometers an hour.”
“Would have been nice to talk to them. You didn’t question them, did you?” I interrupted.
Burt looked at me, his expression showing guilt.
“No, but I did get these,” he said, laying two RAP automatics on the seat between he and Dingo. She immediately caressed the surface of both pieces.
“Parabellum?” I inquired of him. He said nothing, confirming my analysis. The guns were nine millimeter’s produced by a small company in South Africa. That company supplied the local police forces. The weapons were not normally available on the private market outside of that country.
“Boers. Shit. What the hell do the Boers have to do with this?” I said the words to myself, thinking. “You find the suppressor?”
A gray, powder-coated cylinder joined the two automatics. I stared at it for a moment. “SAI,” I asked. Again, Burt did not answer. “Shit,” I said. At every turn with these unknown assailants we were being confronted with an abundance of capability and quality material. SAI was a company out of Denmark. They produced a ‘carbon’ silencer superior even to an oil-filled device, but they were usually more expensive than the weapon they were fitted to.
“Get rid of them,” I said, concluding there was nothing more to be learned from the weapons.
“Can I have one?” Dingo asked.
“Me too,” Wendy followed, instantly.
“Alright, take them, but not the suppressor. That goes out the window.” I was unable to keep the exasperated tone from my voice. I was traveling from Nairobi to Mombasa in the middle of the night aboard the infamous Iron Snake, trapped in a room with people equally as crazy as I, if not more so. The thought did not give me comfort.
“Way cool,” the supposedly silent Dingo intoned, using her caricature of an American accent. “What about dinner. You can’t go to the dining car can you, I mean with those others having gotten off the train early?” She stroked here new acquisition while she talked. Burt smiled at her, and then produced a magazine filled with cartridges. I looked from one of them to the other, wondering which one of them was in more trouble.
I took out my wad of shillings. “These seem to work wonders here. I think we can manage dinner in the cabin.”
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I have this meteor. It was given to me for Christmas by my astronomer friend. It weighs about a pound and a half and is shaped like a mangled potato. i particularly like the fact that it has three little 'tangs' jutting from the bottom so it sits firmly and flatly on a hard surface. I have ordered a chunk of that terrific Hawaiian wood (Koa) to work on and make a stand with. The 'Dreiser' meteor, as I term it, named after my friend, is not the only meteor I have. An astronaut (a really neat guy named Mitchell) gave me the other one. It came from the Moon, or so he said. Why would an astronaut, and one who had been to the moon, no less, lie about that? I believe him. But I also know that all the geologic stuff brought back from the moon was categorized, labeled, stored, displayed, gifted to other countries, and held to be quite valuable. So what am I doing with a two pound chunk of ejecta from the Moon, sitting over here next to the Dreiser object? The Mitchell and the Dreiser. They are both wonderfully weird ducks, objects and men, and they are both emblematic with respect to the interesting things in life. I like to sit and hold them, one in each hand, sometimes. Cold, but somehow comforting. Even the Mitchell. It used to scare me. The Mitchell weighs just over two pounds but does it is not right. If you move your hand with the object in it, well, your hand just keeps going. The two pound piece of silvery metal does not have the proper inertia. It has too much. And that can't be. Not in our universe. Not as we know it. I went back to MIT to study in Quantum Theory. I worked on Project Antares in Los Alamos. I know these things pretty well. The physical laws of the marcro world, the one we inhabit, are immutable. They always work the same way. Every time. The glass dropped from your hand always falls to the floor. It never starts on the floor and rises to your hand. Never. Inertia is the resistance of an object's mass to acceleration. The mass. So you weigh it. Then try to move it. The inertia has to be a function of that mass, which cannot be changed unless you modify the object in some way (like hollow it out or cut part of it off). So the inertia has to be directly tied to the weight. Balsa wood cannot have the same resistance to movement as lead. Never can that happen. But there sits the 'Mitchell' over there, an arm's length away. And it's not right. I have been waiting for years for somebody to come and collect the thing. Some agents in Brooks Brother's suits and cheap shoes. Not from the Agency. From some sci-fi kind of organization. My imagination runs wild. Mitchell must still be laughing over that 'gift.' I have not seen him since, and that was way back in the early nineties. I know he's alive because he surfaced a few months back, and said that "yes, there are aliens about," or some such, on T.V., and it was played all over. I don't believe that, however. But I also don't believe that the universe is quite the place we think it is either. The 'Mitchell' is reassuring, with respect to that. There is more 'out there' than we know. There are possibilities we have not even considered. I like that a lot.
It is Sunday night and the year is ending. Two Thousand and Eight. Wow. I always expected to make it this far, ever since laying there in Yokosuka Japan recovering from the bullets after Nam. I just knew that if that did not kill me than I was in for a long run. And here I am. Maybe it is that single event in my life that made me a keen observer. Writers are keen observers. The good ones, anyway. And I think I am a good one. I did not write that I was great, however. Only history can make such a determination as that. There have been some stupendously great writers, in my opinion, who have not fared that well. Try Ralph Waldo Emerson. Absolutely terrific. But, historically, barely a footnote. And, as far as the general, rather vapid, population is concerned, no footnote at all. Britney Spears gets more play, and probably will over the years ahead. But then, we have become products and control items of that visual device. We don't really get the words and ideas of philosophers put in front of us anymore. We get Letterman and Leno. We get Conan. They give us acid repartee, like I write for House. They don't give us meaning. They don't give us hope. They don't make us think, and in thinking....do. Act. Attempt. If we can't think it we can't do it.
I swing my meteors. The Dreiser, in my left hand, is real and reassuring in it's functional obedience to physics. The Mitchell is anything but that, yet still delightful in the brilliance of opportunity it portends. You can't really swing them in unison, as the Mitchell does not want to come back from the end of the arcs. Real life. Life as it may be. Real life. Life as it will be. I swing them without coordination, as life really is. A New Year beholds.
from-the-chateau-dif.blogspot.com
Ah, people, Caroline is going to be the Senator. it matters not what she says or does or even does not say or does not do. She is in. But we will have all the churning and roiling of waters until the appointment is made. If it was an election, she would still win. Does anyone remember the Conan clown from California? Yes, the guy who's name proves that Hollywood stars change their names because they don't want you to know who they are related to rather than because the names are inconvenient or don't sound right, Mr. Arnold Schwarzeneggar. He walked in from off stage, with a resume that was beyond laughable, an accent straight out of Transylvania and star power. He was in. From the night he stepped onto the stage with Mr. Lovely-Stripe-In-My Hair Leno, he was in. That is the power of the media today. Remember our recent debates? As much as I love Obama, I did not suspend my observation capabilities when he went onstage with John McCain. It did not matter what introduction McCain received or what he said. When Obama stepped onto the stage, that was it. He radiated what he has. Star power. And he was in. The rest was time and a lot, and I mean a lot, of talking about issues and problems and concerns. We are, essentially, still tribal. We follow the leader. If the leaders gets us killed by the million or truly miserable, then we take him or her out. And then appoint or elect his or her son or daughter! It is just the way things are. And yes, i hate that part of culture. All culture. Not just our's, but all of humanity responds the same way. We used to study this phenomenon when Sociology still existed (as the study of group relations). Before the powers that be became frightened by that science and did away with it. Now, just believe what they tell you on television. The War is going just fine out there on the Oceanic Front! Orwell be damned.
Back here, in the middle of my newspaper strewn living room, I reflect upon the homogenated news of the day. It seems that WaMu was all about the lousy mortgage loans they gave to unacceptable risks. Once again, the mantra. It is about the poor people. They sneaked in and destroyed everything with their poorness. They could not pay. Low lifes. These stories lately are being more subtle. They are kind of shifting some of the blame to the people who gave out the loans. One interviewed for the article in the Times was in jail for his fourth charge (theft) unrelated to his work as a mortgage counselor for the bank. So we have the criminals now, they, in league with those poor people, causing the downfall of WaMu. Almost seven billion in bad loans. Wow. Seems like a lot, until you look at the simple fact that it was a run on the bank that took it down. Yes, the simple old, we want our money, depression era, run on the bank. Over the course of three days, just before WaMu fell, people went in and took out nine billion of cash. Forget the loans. Those are long term and have all sorts of delays and things to keep them at a distance for awhile. But you can't avoid nine billion in withdrawals. The people lost confidence and that was it. Funny how that works.
I also read, here and there, about how communities are scaling back on programs for the poor because of their shrinking budgets. I am waiting. I am waiting until they just have no more money to take from the poor. And then they will have to cut law enforcement. Prosecutors. Judges. Probation Officers. Parole Officers. Court facilities. Jails. Prisons. Corrections Officers. All of that awful part of our society which is quietly consuming us. Not just the money, but our very morality. It has to go. We have to do something else, but it will have to be forced upon us. We Puritans are a punishing lot.
Finally, the gas thing. Friedman is at it again. He endorsed globalization and sending jobs offshore. Now he is into gasoline, with other conservatives. They see taxes coming. The worst kind of taxes. Those would be taxes on them. Income taxes. So what do they do? They lay it off. Let's get a huge tax on gasoline while the getting is good. We can then use that to pay for many many things. Oh, nothing that they say it will pay for if it gets done. No, the uses of the money will be changed later, like with social security and highway funds. But they want taxes on the gas because that shifts the burden of raising revenue from the rich to the people who have to drive to work. So here we go again. Note this kind of chicanery for what it is. We have to raise more revenue at some time in the future. You are going to see a lot of Friedman style squirming.
That song has been around for a long time. I think I first heard it while I was in grade school, and it was sung in French. I do not know it's origin. But I do know, outside of some later singing about the scouting camp grounds, that the song's impact came home to me when I watched the movie Star Trek V. I have those moments, and movies can bring them out with such surprise and in such depth. What struck me, during the beginning, and then the end, of that movie was the song sung by Captain Kirk, Bones and Spock. And it was not the words or the melody which really hit me. It was the loose but enormously strong bonding of the character's relationship which reeled me in. I wanted to be there, in Yosemite Valley, with those guys. I wanted the kind of bonding relationships they seemed to have so easily and casually. Spock did not even have to sing. He just sat there and was, well, Spock. Very much separate but intensely 'in' with the other two men.
I have thought of that sequence many times, and seen the movie a couple of times since. It was kind of a lousy Star Trek, and proved that Shatner was best as Captain Kirk, and almost nothing else in life. On the screen or off. Maybe be was 'type-cast' as Kirk, long before the possibility of there ever being any such character. I don't know, as I do not know him. I only know what I can glean from the character he played.
But I think in terms of this financial crisis and more. And the alienated sort of distant lives we have somehow come to choose for ourselves. Not all of us, but many of us. Anthropologically, I know that hardship brings a binding closeness like nothing else. United against the elements we stand. When our very survival is at stake, we bond. We tolerate. We accept. I have been in combat and found all of that there. But it was gone once I was gone. Everyone after combat blown to the far winds. Those that lived, anyway, and there were not many of them. I have some of the 'guys' from the Enterprise crew around me in life.
The professor down the way. The nearby astronomer. The artist out in Washington. An old running and coffee companion from California. I do have these guys, but we do not do Yellowstone. We have no 'Four Seasons' get togethers. In fact, the men don't even really know one another. And that is our life today. I stay in contact. Phones are great for that. But they are cold. Email is cold. Letters are better but so time intensive, and require literary people...and those are frightfully rare in this era. So I am planning a 'Trek.' I shall endeavor to get them all to the beach at Kahala. I will drag the Martin, which I wrote about earlier, out of the closet and across the sea. We'll rent a place and then build an evening fire. Around that fire we'll sit and ruminate over our adventures. Not together, but on our own, as life has caused us to be. And then I will get them to sing Row Row Row Your Boat.
Maybe I won't be able to pull this off. They won't be able to go. Things will get too bad too fast to allow them to leave their other obligations. They won't want to go. But I am an arcane little devil. If I just apply myself, and use some shifting of assets, just maybe I can pull it off. I wonder what you are thinking out there? Are you a product of existentialism too? When I was in college I read and studied the philosophers, and they were big on existentialism then. I didn't believe what I read, however. I did not know what they were talking about. I did not understand that technology, and wild population growth, and competition could lead to such loneliness. A loneliness among others. Working from day to day. Smiling and outwardly happy, but really running alone. What are you like? Does an evening campfire on Kahala Beach, singing Row Row Row Your Boat to my bad guitar strumming, sound like something that cries out to you? Deep down? Or is it just me? Wanna come?
Back in 1997 I was poking around a used car lot, looking for a medium quality, medium mileage and medium appearance used vehicle. I did find one. It was a Volvo, and is still running, just passing the two hundred thousand mark. I love that car, and, as unreasonable as I can be, I have put three times it's worth into maintaining it. It's name is Henry. I know that is not a truly sane thing to do, name a car, much less talk to it, but there we are. You are reading this blog, so you may now silently shake your head...either in disdain and superiority, or because you have read this far and, exasperating as it is, you just have to finish. I don't know. I have no clue as to who you, the reader, are, or what you might think. Most of you never say 'boo' when it comes to comments. So....'Boo'!
While I was homing in the Volvo 'R' car I ran into a homeless guy. He had been 'hired' to provide night security. In reality, the owner of the lot let him sleep off his drunken episodes in one of the 'deaders' in the back of the operational rows of automobiles. I liked that about the owner. He was a tall good looking guy who wore a Stetson and dark glasses all the time. He was lean and ropy, like what I imagined a real cowboy would look like, but he was from New Jersey, which became evident as soon as he took the piece of straw out of his mouth and spoke. I liked that about him too.
The homeless guy was named Thomas, and he lived off a seven hundred dollar a month veteran's check which came to the car lot mail box, because he had none of his own. The owner did not charge him to do that either. Thomas was 'lounging' on the ground near the front door, when I finished walking around the lot and was about to go in and confront Kevin, the owner and lone salesman. "You play guitar?" Thomas asked me. That stopped me on the first step. Unusual question to come from a drunk, anywhere, much less a down in the dumps used car lot. "A little," I said, truthfully. The drunk took a pull on a bottle he kept inside a brown paper bag, swallowed, then asked another question. "You wanna play?" He smiled with amazingly clear eyes, in a creature so damaged. I smiled down at him benevolently, "I don't have a guitar," I stated, then turned to enter the office. "I do," the drunk said, before I was through. I squinted back at him, but stopped with the door open. The drunk rose up and reached around the corner of the mobile home. He brought his arm back with a guitar case in it. "Here, give it a shot," he smiled, holding the case out by the strap. I took it, more by reflex than intent. I almost handed it back, but then I read the word 'Martin' in faded gold letters that were stamped into the top. Martin. Just about the best guitars in the world, I knew. I had never played one. I had never been good enough to actually buy a guitar for myself. Or so I believed. I sat on the step and opened the case. Inside was a different world from the one Thomas inhabited at the lot. A light wood top Martin guitar lay nestled inside the deep plush of the blue interior. I looked between the nylon strings through the hole in the guitar's center. D-28 was stamped there in small faded black letters. I was holding a Martin Dreadnought. One of the deep-bellied beasts that Martin had come out with many years earlier, and dominated the acoustic guitar industry with.
"Is it for sale?" I asked Thomas, not moving to take the instrument from it's case. "Can you play?" the drunk asked again. "If you can play good enough I'll sell you Virginia." He held up the hand not holding his bottle. "Had a accident a few years back." Three fingers on his hand were missing. "Play," he gestured with the broken hand. I took the guitar out of the case very carefully. It was pristine. The strap was of some Indian bead stuff sewn into soft leather. I threw it over my back. It fit. I tried a simply strum to check the sound. "It's tuned. I can still tune, just not play," Thomas gestured again as he spoke. I nodded. It was his guitar. I thought for a moment. I could sing, but not well. I could remember the chords to some songs but not any of the words I would need to sing them. I really only knew one piece without words. It had been the tune I played over and over again when I had been learning. I breathed in deeply and then began performing Greensleeves. The memory of the individual notes and then the chords to the chorus came on their own, as if never gone. And then I remembered the words to the chorus and sang along quietly; "Greensleeves was my only joy, Greensleeves was my delight...."
I finished without having made a single error and I was proud. Thomas smiled. "Virginia's your's for five hundred bucks cash. Take her." I nodded. I had twenty dollars on me but that Martin was not going to leave my hands. "Is there an ATM around here?" I asked the drunk. "What for?" a New Jersey accented voice spoke over my shoulder. I jumped, but held onto the guitar. "Ah, hello," I said. The tall hatted man smiled and nodded, waiting. I could not see his eyes and he was so far above me that my voice broke a bit when I spoke. "Ah, I want to buy this guitar from this...ah, fellow." The man's smile disappeared. He took the straw from his mouth and leaned past me, down towards the drunk. "You sure that you want to let go of Virginia, Thomas?" the man asked, gently. "He's the one," the man replied, taking another pull from the paper covered bottle. "I'll get the cash," the tall man said, twisting back and going through the door. He reappeared in seconds, leaned down again and counted over five one hundred dollar bills. Thomas disappeared them into his front pocket instantly. The man stood again on the ground next to Thomas, taller than I, and I was atop the bottom step. "You got a check or you want to go to an ATM?" he asked, his straw back in place.
I bought the Volvo that day, and the guitar. Kevin took my personal check and let me drive away in the car, and with the Martin. We had bonded. I recalled my last question to him. "Why did Thomas sell his beloved Virginia?" He had taken in a breath, then looked away. "He saw some hard times in that there Vietnam war, back a few years, and he isn't expecting to be around much longer. He wanted to give it a good home. And, but the way, that was the best Greensleeves I've ever heard in my life." I had nodded sheeplishly, then drove out.
I kept track of Kevin and Thomas, as I went back with the Volvo a few times to make believe I needed some advice. In truth, the car, like the guitar, was made of bullet proof cast iron. A few years went by and then I heard that Kevin had committed suicide. I was hurt. I found the obituary and then went out to the burial. I did not know his family so I didn't go to the service or the reception. I stood in the cemetery, well back of everyone. Then I saw Thomas, way off to the side, as well. I walked slowly and carefully among the stones to reach his side. "You brought Virginia," he whispered, pointing at the guitar case. I nodded. We both waited until the people down at the graveside went away. Then we went down to the mound of new earth. I took out the guitar and played Greensleeves. This time I knew all the lyrics. Some words of the last stanza applied so badly that I hesitated there: "Ah, Greensleeves, now farewell, adieu, To God I pray prosper thee...." But, I got through, and I thought about Kevin. He would have been happy. I know Thomas was.
It is two days after. My hangover is just starting to clear, and I do not even drink. The weather has responded in kind, with a tepid weepy mess of a presentation, splashing ran all over the lovely clean snow mass out there. Well, it was lovely and clean out there before, albeit cold as hell. Fog. Gray. Christmas is gone. I have a wonderful Mont Blanc pen that the professor gave me, two shirts and three new sweaters. They are all green, or so I am told, being color blind as I am. I put one sweater on this morning. I had laid out the best one (in my damaged opinion) but, after finishing morning clean-up and shave, I forgot I had laid it out and instead threw on one of the other folded one's. I guess I can't tell the difference, and that is okay. Einstein used to have five suits, all of the same color and cut. Then he wore only white shirts and black socks. I like Einstein's style. He was probably as color blind as I, but he was too important for anybody to ask him to his face, or make fun of him (but then, maybe they did and that is why he ended up with the collection he came up with). Harvey has gone into the basement to hunt his 'stocked' supply down there. The pump is running non-stop, but keeping up. Harv checked that out, but, after just one sniff, went back to his dogged pursuit of his genetically enhanced prey. He is not quiet down there. Empty boxes fly and stacked stuff tumbles. The only rule is that he cannot bring his catches up here though, so I ignore a muted crash or two, coming from down there. If he has any catches I mean, which I doubt. But, in his world, as in mine, make believe is a lot more important than reality.
C.E. Morgan wrote a Christmas story and got it placed in the editorial section of the New York Times on Christmas Day! How do you get a short story into the New York Times at all? By being family I guess. I don't know who C.E. Morgan is, except I did read that the first novel written by this person was demanded by the publisher. That same publisher produced a mid-six figure advance. It is all a crock. Oh, it happened all right, but you see, nobody, and I mean nobody unheard of, gets a six figure advance on a first novel. And nobody gets a short story published on the editorial page of the New York Times on Christmas Day. And finally, nobody gets a rotten story published like that. 'Over By Christmas,' the name of the story that person wrote, should really be the title of the author's career, if the story is any indication. A story about the killing and/or training of horses...and the 'gift' of the necessary torture applied during the training process. "You can't shoot a dog while patting it's head, she had learned the hard way..." Good Christ, what bunk. Then there was the phony alternate sub-story of 'Dean, over in iraq, talking to her on the phone. In the background was an explosion so loud it made her "cry tearlessly." I have already used the phrase 'Good Christ,' so what can I reach for now? Cry tearlessly, give me a break. And somebody died from that explosion, in her story. Now what are the chances of that? Zip. Only in a bad story does that happen. Why am I going on about this? Because C.E.'s very existence in print displays one of the major problems we have in the withering writing culture of our nation. Good writing is seldom read, much less published. Instead we have a litany of the 'Over by Christmas' crap. And, instead of looking at the origin of the piece for answers, we question ourselves. "What is wrong with me? Why can't I understand this story?" It is not you. It is poor leadership. it is nepotism. It is profit-taking. It is keeping it in the family. It is good for them, in the short run, but bad for us all in the long run. The New York Times is dying and the stench of that slow decay is right there, seeping out from the Christmas Day editorial page.
Today, we have humor, once again, from that same editorial staff. Judith Warner, one of my favorite dumb columnists, has a run down one side of the page, while Bob Herbert ("I can too push a pencil across a table top with my nose") Herbert has the opposing side. His article is titled "Stop Being Stupid," but then, of course, he writes on and becomes illustrative of his own title! Part of his rant is about people being so stupid as to purchase houses that they knew they would not be able to afford. What rubbish. People buy a house on hope. And then there is the assistance from the talking heads they got. Even the head of the Federal Reserve was telling them that everything would be alright. He sure as hell was not telling them that whatever they bought would be worth fifty percent less one year later! But, in Herbert's twisted view, it was those poor people once again, pulling us all down. Those grubby, selfish and unionized auto workers. You know the routine. But back to the humor. Judith Warner starts her column with this sentence: "What if you could just take a pill and all of a sudden remember to pay your bills on time." I looked at that sentence and then back over at Herbert's title and then started to laugh. You guys! Saturday Night Live is not that droll!
As if we have a problem, in this current culture, remembering to pay the bills. We are not paying the bills because we do not have the money!!!! We remember. No kidding. We remember every night we go to bed and try to think about the unpaid bills. We remember because our phone does not stop ringing, and it is not friends calling because they forgot Christmas! Judith Warner and Bob Herbert do not have those problems. If you are writing regular columns for the New York Times you are wealthy. Not to mention the books and other perks that go with those jobs. Judith's article was all about a group of shrinks that think it is great to take some of these new 'brain enhancing' substances produced by our wonderful drug companies. How it is as okay as enhancing our intellect by eating a proper diet or working out. Trash. Go ahead, take the junk. Prosac and Paxil and Zanax, and all of the other's of the same ilk, were created to help people who suffer from depression. They take those drugs and become robots. Robots who tend to kill themselves. And the shrinks even know that but prescribe them anyway. I know two people who might benefit from those intelligence enhancing drugs, however. They are both columnists writing on the same page, this day, in the New York Times.
The sun has broken through and, although God has decided that the deep snowy sunscape beneath should stay awhile (it's below zero out there), it is nice to have a break. And the presents are under the tree and waiting, which I am delaying going at with my bare hands until I have everything else in the house just right. A few minutes from now. I found a place to make a fifty out of two twenties and a ten, so I have the paper person's tip ready to post. Hopefully, that person will not take 'Halloween' type action against me for a few days, or so I hope.
I have placed a couple of stories inside the body of my posts over the past few days. They have related to Christmas, or the poignancy of it all, in some way or another. Here is one from the mid-nineties when I was not yet 'all that I could be.'
Christmas Pueblo
I found myself inside the confines of the Santa Fe County jail on some vague trumped-up charge. I was in the 'drunk tank,' which is what the cells they use for new prisoner intake are called there. No bars, no windows, just concrete and steel. No way to see out of the ten by twelve box and no ability to hear. Thankfully I was alone for the first few hours, as I had to come to terms with being inside an American institution for the first time (I had already been in a few abroad, so I was not exactly a 'new fish'), and this was not much fun. It was Christmas Eve. Late into the afternoon. The heartless Santa Fe 'Gestapo' had shown no mercy, in spite of the impending holiday. The way I saw it, I was a gringo and they were anything but. They probably saw it in a more 'Harry Callahan' kind of way. The tank did not remain empty for too long. The riff-raff of evening Santa Fe, New Mexico, began to flow in, dredged from a pristine city that prides itself on not having any homeless people. No, they don't, as all of the potentials get combed off the streets and into that heartless modern version of the Bastille, conveniently located five miles South of even the most outer edge of the town.
The cell became so crowded that the entry of one more body meant that there was just no floor space left. And then they opened the door and forced a huge American Indian through. They slammed it shut again, immediately. He stood there for a few seconds, then stared at the man laying next to me on the bare concrete floor. The man moved, finally settling atop the rim of the stainless steel john located in the corner. The Indian took his place, and glared over at me, inches away, when I happened to look into his eyes. This was no Little Big Man Indian of great good cheer and ancient wisdom, like Chief Dan George. No, this was an Indian from hell, more like that one who killed the girl in the Mohican's film a few years back. I showed no fear, but did look away. I was already an old hand at the predation game. You do not show fear to a predator. That is what the predator is looking and waiting for, because it identifies you as prey. No, you meet predation by impassive and emotionless presentation. The predator then takes you for a predator, as well, and there is no point in attacking another predator unless territory is an issue, or survival. You will only likely get hurt, and predators are deathly afraid of injury, as then they become prey.
There was no trouble from the Indian, as the hours passed, nor from any of the usual suspects. Just prisoners inconveniencing the poor guy who's only spot was the on top of the john. He had to move so the drunks could be sick, and worse. Some head of corrections guy must have known a modicum of mercy that night, or, more likely, there were just too many prisoner's for the place to hold, because they came for me. The guards called my name and told me that I was being 'rolled out,' which is prison slang for being released. I went with enthusiasm, but somehow kicked the foot of the snoozing Indian as I departed. "Excuse me White Eyes!" he hissed up, already into a sitting position as I turned. I held together against the pure ferocity of his expression and the penetration of his hawk-like eyes. "My apologies, I was careless," I stated, flatly. Then I moved slowly to join the corrections officer at the door. The Indian's eyes followed me out the door and remained embedded in my mind as I went through the many steps of processing out. Finally, the guards took me to the big door of intake, opened the steel slab with a key about the size of a Waring blender, and shoved me through it. Merry Christmas, the guard said with a laugh, then slammed the door. My relief was immense, until I looked about me. The sodium yellow of the parking lot lamps allowed the driving snow to appear as if I was standing adjacent to Niagra Falls. And it was cold. I wore an old Sheepskin Company coat so I knew I was not likey to freeze, the torso of my body anyway. But I did not know how I was going to make it the many miles to town, much less a few more miles to anywhere I could get a ride. I turned to see if there was a pay phone on the wall to call a cab, but there was nothing. Only the pitiless concrete.
For an instant I felt relief, as the steel door opened again and I saw the warmth that had been prevalent inside. But that was extinguished in an instant, as the big Indian was pushed through the door, before it slammed again. There we were, and I knew fear. He looked down at me with no expression on his face. I tried to look impassive once more, but I knew I was not doing well because I saw a slow cruel smile begin to form around the edges of his mouth. Then he spoke. "Where you going?"
I was surprised. Not that he would talk but that this time he did so in clear unaccented English, not like he had sounded inside. "To town," I murmured, motioning back with my right shoulder. "Never make it. Not on a night like this," he mused, more to himself than to me. He looked out at the scene I had first encountered. The snow was coming down heavier. Then he shrugged. "You can come with me to the pueblo. It's down the way," he gestured south with his own shoulder. I looked off toward the darkness, then looked to the parking lot. But it was Christmas, and i could not stay there, and I knew I could not make it to town. I shrugged with deep resignation. "Okay," I said aloud, then whispered to myself, "let it be Quick." I followed the Indian into the night. There was no trail, there was no moonlight or any other way to establish bearings. So I just followed the huge man closely. We moved downhill, through the La Bajada Canyon, finally trudging under an overpass which held up the four lanes of Interstate forty.
A yellow glow in the distance became the pueblo. The Indian wormed his way between the densely packed mud buildings. Lights glared out, to assure us that the snow had not abated in it's attack. We came around a corner to a wooden door. The upper floor of the adobe structure jutted out above, so we stood and beat the snow from our clothing and boots as best we could. The door opened without anybody knocking. An old woman stuck her head out, then motioned us both inside. I stepped into a different world. The room was filled with people of all ages. They were all sitting at the many tables, seemingly strew about without order. The big Indian motioned me to an empty seat between two young boys. He said nothing. They said nothing. I sat, more in shock and wonder than because I was willingly following rational directions. The two boys reached for bowls and started scooping stuff onto my plate. Tortillas and burritos. I did not even know what Indians ate until then. Corn things, with lots of hot sauces. Everyone went back to eating. They did not look at me, so I started eating as well. I ate the whole plate, so the boys refilled it without any request on my part. When I finished the second plate, they refilled it again. I looked over at the old woman, whom the big Indian had seated himself next to. I saw here smile very briefly. Then the big Indian smiled for the first time, and I understood without any words being necessary. The old woman liked the fact that I loved her food. And the big Indian appreciated that.
"This is my family," he said, gesturing around at all the people at all of the tables. They smiled, as if on cue. "Welcome to the Reservation and my family. I'll drive you back to town tomorrow. But its Christmas, so maybe you want to stay longer for the ceremony." I nodded, only briefly wondering if the 'ceremony' had anything to do with a White Man being cooked in a pot over a roaring fire. "Merry Christmas," I said, as I nodded with enthusiasm, a genuine smile creasing my face for the first time in months. "Merry Christmas," they all yelled back in unison, then began talking, laughing and carrying on, just as if I was an Indian returning to his home.
It is upon us, the Christmas of two thousand and eight. I have sipped of the Don David and made my wish for the happiness of those who have fallen before me. That one sip of a fine Argentinian Malbec, a product from a valley where maybe God reigns over this night. Do you believe in God? I think of such things on this night. It is so cold out there, so blowing and white. My 'advent' trees shine up upon the hill and spokes of light and color radiate out over the sweep of the deep snow, with movement from the wind making them twinkle and play. Is there a God? I don't know. Do you sometimes fall upon your knees and tell your troubles to Him, then ask for His help? I do, and have over the years. Do you ever ask for a ''sign' of His existence? Any sign at all, no matter how subtle or marginal? Then look about for such? I do, and have over the years. In driving I sometimes think of Him as my co-pilot, and even look over at the empty seat, from time to time. Does that me make me totally whacked? If I confessed those acts to a shrink, would the shrink find me certifiable? I mean, more certifiable than I am from other stuff? Do you do any of this? Would you tell if you did? I tried to be a good Catholic, in my early years, then fell away. I tried to be a bad Catholic, but that did not work either. I read the Bible and argued with people who were supposed to know that work backwards and forwards. Reborn Christians. Maybe I fit with them best, simply because they do not mind if I say that "God did not give me the gift of faith." I have studied the Koran, as well, and found it to be strange, going from back to front, as it does. A lot like the Bible, but not. I once, long ago, went down on my knees, literally, and presented the 'Unseen Above' with a list I had written on a yellow note pad. I had written down nine items. The items were problems that I was experiencing, or was afraid of, which had no possiblity of solution whatsoever, outside of divine intervention. I asked for those problems to be taken away. The next day, over coffee with a good friend, who believed more than I, I told him of my act. He asked to see the list, so I produced it. He read the nine items slowly, then looked over the top of the paper at me, as if in wonder that a person such as I could have problems of that magnitude. He shook his head, then smiled. He tore up the list right there, in front of me. And he said, "Now, go out there and those problems will be gone. We spend most of our lives worrying about problems that never happen." We left. Over the next three months the problems, all nine, went away. My question, on this Chrismas Eve night is, did those problems go away because of what Bob said, or because I had put them forth to God and He acted? Or was it all bizarre coincidence? I can't remember the problems anymore, but I wish I could. And how life changes. When I ask God for help now, it is usually because I am asking for Him to help other people, or for Him to help me to help other people. Is it His work that I do not feel that I have to ask him to resolve my own problems anymore? I do not expect any answers from you, out there, on this night. I don't even really expect that anyone will read this, but it is okay if people do. Just for fun. And for their own introspection. We don't often really take the time to isolate ourselves and think such thoughts, or ask ourselves such questions. But I think it would be better if we did. Do you think so too?
I received a gift from a friend, just before he headed South for the holiday. Back when I was 'operational,' during Desert Shield (the operation to prepare us for Desert Storm) I ran a group of communications guys out in the Arabian desert. Our job was to move into Iraq from Saudi Arabia and test the communications capabilities of the Iraqi forces. We were looking for holes in their surveillance net. We found a lot of them, so the mission was a great success. But I lost eleven guys doing it. Back then, our control, back in the home office, used to give us Mont Blanc pens after the completion of a successful mission. The regular size black and gold one for team members and a maroon one for the mission commander. That was me. Some of the guys who passed over did not have surviving family (common to field personnel of that ilk) so I got their personal effects. And the Mont Blanc pens they had accumulated. So I had, and still have, quite a collection of those fine writing specimens. Once and awhile, I give one away to someone I find deserving. I gave a black and gold one to this man here, a friend of mine, just before he left on his trip. And I did not tell him the significance of the gift. Now, here is the amazing thing. He also gave me a gift. It was a small oblong box. I opened it to discover a Mont Blanc pen, just like the one I had given him, except brand spanking new. We laughed. Then he added something. He said that the pen he had given me at least had a full cartridge of ink! I realized that I had not checked the writing capability of the one I had given him. It was, of course, the original that had been in that pen since it was issued way back in the eighties. I nodded and smiled in mirth with him. But I did not tell him about the history of the instrument. Even though he is a noted historian, i was not sure he would like the sentiment and provenance of the gift. But it is Christmas, and those boys gone by, who fought and gave everything, believing it was for us, well, I think they would be okay with the gift. I always wondered why we were given such 'after-action awards.' Most of the guys were not even readers, much less writers. But life is strange, and you just don't get to know some things. Is there a God? Did those pens come from or through him? If they did, then what is their significance?
It is an interesting time to be alive, as this day closes, and Christmas, that single brief day, opens. We are in such dire straights, as a nation, a culture, a way of life. We have a new team at the helm. We have Obama and Clinton and Richardson, and more. We have hope and a shining dream of a grand trip back to a future steeped of the past. We are 'marching to Pretoria, so to speak, and we are doing so with a bit of hesitation and trepidation. We don't know who to trust or why we should trust them. But we have to trust somebody. No choice is a choice in of itself. Or is it as they used to say in early Marine Officer training: "Any decision is better than no decision at all." I don't know so many things. All I can do is celebrate certain things that just feel right. Hilary, who I can't be allowed in front of, particularly on this night, said that "the time of Cowboy diplomacy is over." And I stood up and cheered to hear that on CNN earlier. Some things are going right in this pocket of the universe.
I am going to make a list of nine problems. I am going to get on my knees and ask Him to take those problems away. Then I am going to go see Bob (he is a friend to this day!) and present my list to him over a morning cup of coffee. When Bob tears up the list, as I know he will, my smile will grow broader and my hope for the future warmer, and filled with blissful expectation. Merry Christmas to one and all.
I am fully awake, as I got the papers from under another layer of deep snow. And I found the envelope from the newspaper wraith. What do I put in it? No check because it is addressed to "Delivery Service." I feel like I am getting my papers directly from Langley (CIA) Headquarters. A twenty? Is that too little? Maybe a fifty. I don't have a fifty (this is Southern Outback Wisconsin and they don't know what a fifty is out here, unless is refers to a clothing size) so I would have to put in two twenties and a ten. But that wad seems excessive. But it is Christmas. But it is a tough financial time for all of us. But I am afraid of the Newspaper Delivery Service. I was once a very decisive person, but look at me now. I am still three presents 'short of a full deck' and it is Christmas Eve, and snowing to beat all get out. What do I do? Where do I go? Lake Geneva has a bunch of stores, each about the size of an airport kiosk. Will they even open in the middle of this, the most aggressive winter attack of recorded history out here? I don't know. The aging dinosaur of a Rover sits patiently in the garage, crying softly to be decked out in the chains that even Professor Machado, the smartest man any of us have ever known, can't fathom the directions to install. But they are back there, all shiny on the floor behind the front seats. And 'Bertram' my old wonderful troll of a beaten-up four-wheel-drive is ready for anything.
Oliver Morton. He wrote a column for the New York Times this morning. He slipped through, like Thomas L. Friedman. The editorial board of the Times must be on Christmas furlough. Both of the columns were pretty extraordinary, bright as they were accurate. Morton wrote of the earth, its condition and prospects, while Friedman wrote about the silly and destructive celebration of stupidity that has taken over this country and caused much of what we are experiencing now. Yes, Thomas stole some of my stuff, then wrote it better. Usually, I only celebrate Maureen Dowd's assumption of my blog material (I can't call it stealing as her fan club gets all upset, and besides, its not. We don't own this stuff out here anymore. What we bloggers write is like air. You just breathe it in and then it gets re-breathed again). So Thomas, you may have my stuff and I doff my non-existent hat at the elegant manner in which you chose to use it. But back to Morton's column. He writes about the earth as George Carlin used to describe it. If the earth ever figures out we (homo sapiens) are here, and causing trouble, then we are screwed. We have almost no power over this blue and white ball of water and ice. Even our limp-wristed influence over base temperature is a mere nothing to this planet. And the only one's to actually suffer from our excess are likely to be, well, us. The Earth turns and moves on inexorably and it is unaffected, really, in the scale of things, by even such events as large astroid strikes. That stuff merely impacts on the ecosystem. Life goes up and down and around stuff like that all the time. Way to go Morton. A scientist. A brain. No more of that Bush stuff. Okay, okay, I am not going there. I will even give that low-life scum bag of a drooling president a break today. It is Christmas Eve. And life is cold, snow-buried, but good. Christmas music plays, I have the wood for a fire to burn through this day, on into my own personal Eve, and I have a prime rib for the oven. Harvey is ever loyal and only mildly condescending. Cat bliss.
Now, I shall get cleaned up and go out there into the whiteness of day. It is Christmas Eve and there just have to be more people God wants to put in my way. Merry Christmas!
i get comments through email, much more than I get comments on this site. it seems that many people feel that I am a bit 'over the top' tough on some of our leaders, the pundits and even the media. Am I? I wonder about that. The RAGE has not set in yet. The rage I speak of is the one that is going to sweep this country once everyone figures out that they are not going to avoid being stung to the core by this financial madness of the last forty years. And they will figure out that they were robbed, which means their families and their children's children, as well. Note that there are sites popping out on the internet about where the exact locations of the thieve's mansions are located! That is just the start. But I will back off a bit. I will leave Bill Bennet out of my vitrolic comment. He is bedded down on an opium mat somewhere, 'biting the clouds,' as they say in China (about opium smoking). I shall not attack William Kristol for awhile, no matter what his elitist pedigree and lifestyle seem to demand. And Krauthammer. He is a nasty little guy, but he's crippled, so I'll back off. That I support the auto workers, wholeheartedly, well, I guess that is okay. And I hope it is okay for me to continue to advise Governor Rod. Remember, he is our entertainment right now. We don't need him to pack it in just yet. Couric gets a pass, as does that little weasel Ben Stein. Maybe I can pick on Letterman. He seems to be able to take it.
The cards are gone. I don't know how they turned out. I never like the finished product because it could have used more work and detail. But my heart is in the right place. I send them to transmit care and thanks. Thanks for being someone deserving of getting one, in my judgment, and care about people who have great hearts and are helping us go in the right direction. The postman at the little post office here, Michael, a really really great guy, frightened me to death by first telling me the way in which I framed and glued the stamps to the envelopes would never be allowed. There I stood, with fifty of these things in my hands. He saw my look, and to prevent my collapse, and the subsequent trampling by everyone else in line, he relented. He hand-cancelled them. Thank you Mike, and Merry Christmas. Try to find that kind of greatness in a big city post office. On the other hand, he can tell me what is inside the envelopes of my incoming mail without my opening them.
The Advent trees are out there whipping around in the wind and blowing snow. I can see them from up here in my office. This office emits a 'blue hue' when I am working. That is most nights. People who have come to know that my abode is secreted right off the main road and a bit down the hill can see the blue hue when they drive by. Some beep, but I no longer attempt to get to the window to wave. I am just not fast enough. Harvey pays attention though. He always raises his head, looks toward the window and then back at me, as if to say: "Does someone need to be eaten?" When I do not respond, he lays his head back down and does what he does. Passes the winter time by sleeping, or making believe he is asleep. Fools me. Why is it that a cat can come out of sleep in an instant? I can't do that. Some of the reason that i go out into ten below weather, forgetting the nearby prepared duster, is because i am not fully awake at that point. I am fully awake a few seconds later when I get back in, however. Which reminds me. I have to find that envelope. For the newspaper guy/gal. I just cannot get by without the papers and I can't get down that driveway at that hour of the morning. Without a substantial Christmas tip I just know what is going to happen. I also can't seem to get up early enough to catch the sucker red-handed, delivering. Or, if I am up early enough, he sneaks in and out without my knowing. Maybe i should start drinking again. Or try that Ginko stuff. No, that was discredited, like red meat. Maybe it will come back, like red meat.
I have this friend in Texas. He is smarter than me. But he thinks that I am smarter than him. Or at least he makes me think that he thinks that. I am confused. But, anyway, he also edits some of my work. And he is terrific. But I have to be careful because he 'lays things between the lines,' if you know what I mean. I have to re-read his email several times to get everything. And when I don't, well, he is also a bit arrogant and steps on me with his marvelous intellect. I think I have convinced him to write again himself. He once sent me some work. It was better than mine. But I could not tell him that because...I was not big enough to be able to do that. So, for Christmas, I am encouraging him to write again. And that feels good. There is so much under-utilization of talent today. It is out here, but our culture has not been encouraging it.
Once i was so poor I could not afford a Christmas tree. I think it was nineteen seventy four, or so. I went to the Sears and Roebuck Christmas Tree lot to see if I could find a remnant. I had four dollars. And I had no car, well, none that ran. I got to the Sears parking lot and started checking the leaning cut trees. There was nothing under ten dollars. But I had the diligence only known by poor people. I went on checking. After awhile, a guy came over to help me. He had the buff outdoor wear that I have never really never known how to buy or wear. I tried to brush the guy off and keep on checking. But he would have none of it. Finally, stepping from tree to tree with me, like a bad Laurel and Hardy routine, he asked the big question: "How much do you have?" I shrugged trying to appear urbane, then gave up. "Four bucks," I admitted. "Where do you live?" he replied, which surprised me. What did it matter?
So I described the labyrinthian path I had followed to get to the lot. "No car?" he asked. I frowned. I could not figure out what his point was, so I let him have it: "No car, four bucks, no job, and no prospects, is that enough for you?" i started to walk away. "What about this one?" the guy promptly came back with. He pointed at a beautiful eight-foot Noble Pine. I just looked at him. He stepped closer to me. "This isn't really the Sears Christmas Tree lot. it's mine. I just rent the space every year. It would be a favor to me if you would take the tree for Christmas and let me deliver it with my truck." I couldn't say anything. I thought of all the proud reasons that I thought that that was a bad idea. He saw me think those thoughts. "I do it for redemption, so don't get the wrong idea," he said gently. "I wasn't always the way i am today. i was something less. And I owe it to The Man to do Christmas right every chance I get. You're my chance. Don't blow it for me." I nodded. What else could I do. I rode with him in his truck, with my wonderful tree in the back. He didn't say a word and neither did I. When he helped me unload it in front of my apartment I saw his shirt rise up on his forearm. There was a tattoo there. The image was of a couple of wings, under which was inscribed "101st Airborne." And I understood. "Merry Christmas," he yelled, driving away with his window down, a big smile looking back at me. I shouted the only reply that seemed appropriate: "Semper fi."
Those two newspapers were leaning against my front door this morning. I can't find the envelope with my cash tip inside. What am I going to do? I stood, newspapers in hand, and looked down my long driveway. It is a white nightmare down at the end of it. Overlapping plows in unwitnessed combat have crisscrossed the cul-du-sac and left jumbled 'Tiger Teeth' of piles strewn everywhere down there. I cannot imagine making my way into that mess to find my papers. I have got to tip this mysterious elusive newspaper person. Christmas stress. I read Judith Warner, a replacement columnist for David Brooks in the New York Times. Where is David? Oh, he needed a break for Christmas, I guess. These 'princes of press' must have their rest. I mean, after all, it takes intensive labor to sit and write something interesting. Another Christmas crock. Like the garbage Judith wrote this day. Brainless. Let's see, she writes about the fact that reason and logic are triumphing over the forces that make Christmas what it should be...wonder, marvel and faith. I am paraphrasing, as her stuff is not worth memorizing. She calls this the 'Woody Allenization' of Christmas. I do like that line, however misplaced and addled it is. You see, Judith is lost in the combating and overlapping mythologies of Christmas in our culture. She is all caught up in the Santa Claus thing, I guess. I am so very sorry Judith, but even though Norad has been tracking Santa's Christmas Eve flight ever since 1955, he is not real. We made it all up to have fun with our kids...and quite possibly for control and discipline purposes as well.
Christmas is filled with wonder, marvel and faith. You just have to look beyond the mythologies. The wonder that people can take a bit of time and think about the plight and condition of others around them. The marvel that they will go out and spend time and money to get something for somebody else that is just right, just to have that person feel a little bit better about life, and maybe them. The faith that something is at work of goodness, driven by, well, you don't have to know. You just have faith that there are more people like you out there, buying stuff not totally out of obligation but because you really want to get stuff for them. There was an old school joke about faith that always liked, even thought the underlying premise was discomforting. Johnny is sitting in the back of his grade school class when his teacher asks the big question. what is faith? Johnny raises his hand, which the teacher tries to avoid, as Johnny is a notorious trouble-maker (i like that part as I was always in that coat closet in my Catholic School for shameful questions). But the teacher caves in when there are no other hands. "Alright Johnny, go ahead...," the teacher says, with disappointment and a bit of trepidation. "Faith is believing in something that you know is not really true," Johnny responds, in his normal fashion. Johnny went, of course, straight to the coat closet, to inhale the aroma of all the little girl's coats hanging there, if he was like me. But the premise of that story is not true. You can have faith in any number of things that may or may not be true. We just don't have enough data or life experience to know. God is like that too. Is He there? Is He a He? What is the deal? I think He is, but I am not sure. I am beginning to sound like Woody Allen, who I never liked, although he is funny...but with some real bad personal habits.
About teaching. The Times had an article about teaching in it. The writer combined the plight and conduct of my beloved auto workers with that of teachers. They are unappreciated. That part is true. But auto workers do not stay up nights working on their stuff, worrying about their charges and taking extra time and effort to help a small person who really needs it. Teachers are different. I know one well. I mean one right now, sleeping and shopping away because she is off for the holiday (one of the few small benefits of the profession). This teacher is kinda normal I think. She asked me to write a short story for her grade school classes. So I wrote The Treasure Pool, which is found somewhere back there in these blogs. She gave out forty-nine copies and then had all the students write reviews back to me. She copied and stapled, read the story to make sure I had not slipped in any filth (I am, after all, an ex-Marine!) and then spent time and trouble helping these kids to come to terms with the plot, the theme and the elements of English such necessary educational arrows to have in their quivers. The critiques came back, and they were wonderful. Oh, I got dinged pretty good on my grades in certain areas. I wrote back to those kids who had given me bad grades for the most minor of things. I was stung. I was nice, but I had to say something! But the story is not about me. It is about the extra time and effort this teacher, Mrs. Machado, takes to really help and advance her students. She is an example of what it is all about out here, and in this holiday season. She follows Sister Sarah Fogarty (my fourth grade teachere) and Sister Michael Marie (my fifth grade teacher) in being one of those unknown and unsung saints. Maybe here, in this lonely blog, she will get the only public recognition she ever gets. But she is all about Christmas. The embodiment. And she is filled with reason and logic and understanding the universe. But she is also a thing of wonder, marvel and faith. Merry Crhistmas Anise Machado. We love you.
It is said that St. Francis of Assisi created the first Nativity Scene in his yard. The mythology has it that he set up a manger, and the then made up other characters from whatever he had laying around. He wanted to recreate the birth of Christ, the best he could, for himself and his friends. I have one. A manger and the Nativity Scene characters. The stable I made myself out of some old wood with a hand saw and some nails. It has survived intact for twenty-nine years. In 1969 I was fresh out of the hospital from getting all shot up in Vietnam. I could not be a Marine and I could not walk, or move well enough, to get a job. So I sat around and waited. During this time I found a small apartment in San Clemente to live in. So cheap that my other dwellers in the six-plex were new immigrants from Vietnam. Strange, to circulate among them every day as I limped around with nothing to do. One day I encountered an older man, who I knew to be the head of one of the families living there. His name was Huang Nguyen. Somehow, he had found out something of my service in his former country. He approached, shook my hand, and then apologized. I didn't get it. I tried to get to the bottom of things but his English was bad. Instead he invited me in to meet his wife and three young children. They treated me very nicely, and I was surprised. In country, the Vietnamese civilians I met had all been cold and remote. Huang took me into his bedroom/office. There he showed me two pictures on his walls. One was of him walking arm in arm with Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the North Vietnamese Army. In the other, he was striding along, a huge smile on his face, with Robert McNamera. I asked Huang who he really was. He told me that he was the former Province Commander of the I Corps area. I was stunned. That was the area I fought all over and had been wounded in. I asked Huang who's side he had really been on. He said that he was on both. He had a family. He did not know who was going to win. He then asked me what I would have done in his place. I thought over that one, and then had to laugh. We shook hands again, both laughing. We would have become friends, I think, except the language barrier was just too great. And maybe, I was too soon from that awful war.
It was just before Christmas, when Huang and I met that year. On Christmas Eve, his oldest daughter, a pudgy cute little thing everyone called Hamburger, because of her proclivity for those things, knocked on my door. She handed me a bag and said Merry Christmas, then giggled and ran. I took the bat in and opened all the small packages wrapped inside. The Three Wise Men. The manger. The baby Jesus. Mary and Joseph. The dutiful cow, sheep and donkey. And a big camel. All the pieces are porcelain and gilded with gold that has not tarnished to this day. The sit this evening in my home-made stable atop a special table near the base of my tree.
I think often of Huang and Hamberger. I wonder what became of them. They were always wonderful to me and seemed to always act surprised that I was wonderful back to them. As much as I could be. I had nothing but limps, scars and painful memories back then. Why did Huang apologize? Why were they so nice? Why did they give me a Nativity Scene, of all things? Today, I don't know anymore than I knew back then, although I have had a lot of time to think and many more battles to grow more experienced. If there is a God. If there really is a Jesus. Then Huang and his family were sent to help me through. To help me understand, at that so very difficult a time, that the Vietnamese people were not to blame. That they were not much different than we are, and were. That my pain did not have to be translated into an eternal hatred. And so I have the set. And it means a lot to me. Christmas is special in so many ways to me, and I wish that the spirit evident in this season would seep through to the rest of the year for everyone.
Kristol, that William fellow who writes for the New York Times. You know the one. William Kristol. Saliva runs from the side of the mouth Kristol. Maybe, if he keeps writing and getting read, one day people will say "Oh, what a load of Kristol," when they are talking about a pile of the steamy stuff. This morning both of my papers, thrown literally to my doorstep (I still have not sent that envelope with the cash in it), were just filled with garbage. Kristol's drivel stood out, however. His column was both a compliment to Cheney and and insult to Caroline Kennedy. He compliments Cheney on the man's using the "F" word on Leahy one day. Kristol thinks that, when Cheney was asked about whether he had really said that to the Representative, he said that he had and that it was called for. Cheney. The fat white slob of a moronic brutal coward that he is. Yes, the same man who was appointed head of the committee to find a real Vice President for Nucular Bush. What did he do? What clowns like him always do. He made sure that he took apart every real candidate that was evaluated, then declared himself the only viable alternative. This is the man who, under the influence of too much booze, and saliva dripping from his craven down-slanted lips, shot his friend in the face with a shotgun, then forced the friend to say that he actually needed that birdshot treatment for clearing his lifelong case of acne. The torture king Cheney. The war criminal. The same creep who says that the President can do anything, during faux wartimes, and it is legal. The Goodbye and good riddance Vice President of all time. And then Caroline. I too railed recently about the nepotistic trends in both our political and our art communities. I don't like it. I think that we went deep into democracy to get away from this kind of inherited passage of importance and power. Inheritance means that you are going to get some real stupid and crummy leaders in large amounts (the average I.Q. really is 100, don't forget, which is not bad but do we want them running our lives?). But Caroline is okay. You know why? Yes, you do. Me too. She stood there while her father was carted by in front of all of us. She has stood well against the rage of outrageous fortune which has bruised and battered her pampered existence for all of her life. She is our's more surely than anyone I can think of, except her brother John Jr. And he is dead. And I still miss him. So, I think that Caroline has a good heart. And I do not require much more. Cheney has a black heart, which he received in a secret transplant operation from the cadaver of Joseph Mengele. He has been very very successful at continuing those medical experiments, begun years ago by his donor. Please, Mr. Lowlife Kristol, do not ever mention those two people in the same column again. We know which of the two you most resemble.
And then there is the Torturous Tribune. Yes, they came out for torture again this morning. In time for Christmas. There little editorial piece explains it all away as being due to fear. The poor, weak and phoney- macho leaders of this country, so stunned and frightened by the events of 911, turned to torturing suspects in order to defend our country. Suspects. That is the key throw-away word in the article. Suspects. Who the hell was a suspect? Who is? And that word is one of the biggest problems with torture, and all that goes with it. The suspect can be anyone. People turn in people all the time, given an enormity of motivation. In Iraq we were giving out hundred thousand dollar rewards for anyone who would accuse and turn in a suspected terrorist. No questions. A hundred grand. The lottery over there. Equivalent to millions over here (well, it used to be. Now it is worth about $312.00, or soon will be). And you could get rid of your worst enemy quite anonymously. Wow. What a bonanza that was! The victim you turned in was instantly taken out of the country and then slowly roasted over charcoal fires ten thousand miles away (the heat occasionally quenched with water from the water-board pool), never to be returned to your country or village. Torture is absolutely terrible, to the people tortured (go figure) and the people forced to torture them. Even to the people that happily torture them (take a close look at the miserable facial features and expressions of Dick Cheney). Shame on you, the editorial staff of the disappearing Tribune. Do you know why you are going away, slowly but surely? Because you have no heart,and your 'thinkers' have no life experience. You have not lived hard, ever. You have not traveled the world, really. You have not lived in poverty or fear or without hope. I celebrate that for you. But you should not be in control of what we read, any more than Caroline should be handed the reigns of decision-making for an entire state in the Senate. You are probably nice people. But you are simpering fakes when it comes to understanding the human condition, then allowing us to be informed about it. Like the executives of the auto companies, as with the executives of all of our financial houses, you need to pass on. And you will, but you are going to take The Tribune with you. It is your right. And I understand that. But I will miss that Tribune of old, which your fathers and their fathers built. But twaddle takes its toll.
Hey, even that smarmy slob Krauthammer is taking my stuff. Okay, go ahead Charles. If it is good enough for Maureen Dowd than I guess it is good enough for you. He writes on the heels of my blog, with respect to Caroline's probably appointment to the Senate in New York, wherein I ran on and on about this 'transfer of royalty thing,' this nepotism and concentration (brought about by our media) of fame meaning everything about everything. Kraut is just an aging neocon without a cause right now. So go ahead and pick on Caroline. She has set herself up to be a target out here. I am sorry about that. For me, when I look at her face, I still see the fragility and pain of those terrible days in the early sixties. Piss off Krauthammer. Go pick on somebody your own size, like Bill Bennet (the slimy silent edifice of corpulent fat) or that radio rat (Rush "these are not oxycontin" Limbaugh).
Finally, there was a funny article. It was the reverse of "I confess, he did it," kind of a thing. There is this writer who is a supposed historian. He was fixated on, for most of his life, about a guy named B. Virdot who took out an ad in an Eastern Paper to solicit stories about hardship during the first depression (1933, or so). Then he sent checks, this Virdot guy, to the best stories. Well, it seems that our writer looked into this matter, which had perplexed and impressed him for his whole life. For years he could not find out who Virdot really was. It seems that the guy had used a fictional name. He investigated and then investigated some more, until finally his mother handed him a proverbial 'old black valise.' Inside were all the letters written to Mr.Stone, the real benefactor (Virdot). It turns out to be the writer's grandfather. His mother had never said a word. So now we have it. The great hero of those dark days turns out to be the grandfather of our investigator and writer. Now, is that a load of Holiday crap, or what? His mother never said a word for all those years. It reminds me of the 'silent warrior' veterans at the Naval Hospital. There are silent warriors, you know. They are the one's that did not do anything when they served. By being silent they protect that simple fact. You are left to assume, as they want you to, that they were in such bad stuff that they can't talk about it. Another load of brown stuff. Just like the Virdot story. The investigator and author works in fiction not history. And he is selling much more in that genre. The sale of drivel is going well.
Back to my cards. I am almost done. Really. Really! Shut up Harvey.
So, have you been to an airport since 911? A lot of people have, but, amazingly, a lot of people also have not. For those of you who have been, I offer my sympathy and rage buried deep. For those of you who have not, but will in the future, all you get is my humor. God, are you in for it. But, in watching Sixty Minutes tonight, you would have thought they we, the prospective passengers, were all of the problem. Our attitude. Our treatment of the security personnel. We watched TSA training. And we got to view the new Gestapo oriented uniforms. For some reason in this culture we have the idea that violence is prevented, and aggression tempered, by authority figures wearing ever more militant macho costumes. Who the hell is advising these nitwits? And it's in our military too. Ever look at photos of our Doughboys in WWI? Our GI's in WWII, or even our troops in Vietnam? They looked American and they, almost one and all, aside from looking stressed and burned out, looked nice. Looked of quality. Looked like they were part of the Jeddi Knights fighting for 'The Force.' Now our troops look like nasty Imperium troopers, with insect dark glasses and ugly helmets designed directly after the hated SS helmets worn by the Germans in WWII. Jesus Christ, give us a break from this developmental stupidity. Where are all the gay designers? Have they all died of aids? Cannot a single one of those gifted geniuses 'not tell' when 'not asked,' and help us out? And then, when they are done serving us there, can they please move on the the police and security services? Get stopped by a local state trooper these days. The uniform alone (with, of course, the derigour insect glasses) will scare the crap out of you. We are leaning toward our gayer more gentle side these days. How about we do that with our authority figures. The results might astound us all. What if TSA agents were just nice? Maybe out Puritanical Calvinistic origins just cannot stomach that.
But I digress. It seems that the TSA is upset that we treat them so badly. I have been to at least fifty airports since 911. Guess what. I have never ever once seen any passenger treat a TSA agent badly. I have seen no verbal or physical abuse towards those people. But I have seen a ton of TSA types making complete nasty-tempered asses out of themselves. The public is, by and large, well aware of the overwhelming power of the TSA dolts to put us on 'no-fly' lists or 'danger' lists for the rest of our lives. We know it and we know that power is present, and right there in our faces. Clint Eastwood might have been referring to the attitude of most TSA agents of today: "Go ahead, make my day." There was a little glimmer of truth that seeped through the cracks on that Leslie (I do not wear a wig) Stahl presentation. A woman complained about being abused in her 'training' class but then was on a video where she was at an airport directing passengers. She sounded exactly like what I have described, and it was right there. It was obvious that she felt that her charges were timid dumb dolts. And the passengers responded like that, just before we cut away. This is media spinning. It was brought to us by this very same media, and it was authored into existence by the political advisors of running politicians. The idea is to immediately jump on the band wagon with facts that are just opposite of the way things really are. And that is what is going on today with the TSA. And Sixty Minutes, Investigative nothings. Purveyors of pablum and disinformation.
Here is the solution. Technology. Not agents. And technology of hardened protection, not detection. Yes, build better tougher planes. There ought to be no ability of the crew to interact with the passengers anymore. None. The bulkhead built between should be impenetrable. Then stop allowing all that carryon. Yes, limit us to little bitty purses and bags with stuff like books and snacks inside. Nothing else. No computers, no cell phones, no games or ipods. Nada. No overhead bins (and more headroom!). All luggage gets checked. And then the technology of the plane takes over. Make the cargo areas hardened to be able to take even a small explosion. And build them to be jettisoned in flight. Now, the detection. Let it all go toward the checked baggage. No people involved. Just stuff being analyzed. Forget about the penetrating radar images to view our bodies. And do not believe that they are not going to keep the images and play with them, and laugh at all of us, or sell them. Our social security numbers were once sacrosanct. Then our driver's license information. All gone to graveyards every one. Your credit data is now forever (not five years or seven....they lie), and our driving information is for life (not three years or five or even ten for a drunk driving...they lie). F. Scott Fitzgerald: "You don't get to start over in this country." No shit. So stop believing them and get skeptical. It is a whole lot healthier, and you are also less likely to find your corpulent body on Facebook or Youtube.
I am finishing my cards. I really am. I have gone to the basement. Or, at least, I am going right this minute. Harvey is waiting for me down there. He has the mistaken impression that there are mice down there, and he hunts madly through all the stacked boxes and piled chairs and just stuff. He came up with a mouse once, and I was mad as hell. He brought that mouse in from the outside and then stocked his basement for the future. I just know it. There have been no more. I caught that mouse (with Harvey's unwitting assistance) and he is running free, under the snow, in a nearby field. Or at least he was until it hit fifteen below again a few hours ago. Now he is paused. On hold for the winter, so to speak. The non-existent one's in the basement I refuse to consider further, but I am about to put up with Harvey going down there and making believe, just to drive me daffier.
It is fifteen below zero out there, and the wind is whipping last night's five extra inches of snow into a moving white curtain of death. I went out in my robe anyway. Because I am more like Ben Stein than I care to admit. By writing that I mean, 'someone who is much more capable of transmitting the image of being intelligent rather than actually having that quality.' I am quoting one of the shrinks at the Naval Hospital, where I go every Wednesday, after he had been around me for awhile. I did not kill him, because I am not violent anymore. I swear. But I felt violent after coming back in the front door. I did not curse Harvey, who sat at the door looking at me with that 'Good Christ, but you are one stupid example of the species Homo Sapien' cat look. I had no rotten bleak words for him because I could not talk. I could only inhale. When I recovered enough, I looked over at the chair where I had carefully set out a huge sheep-lined Austrailian Duster the day before. Harvey sat there and looked at it too. Finally, regaining my voice, but having to discard my snow covered slippers (Ugh, of course), I was able to talk. "Don't start," is all I said, pointing at him with a snow and plastic covered Tribune. The mail delivery guy (I think he is a guy, but I have never seen him/her) has been dropping my papers at the door lately, ever since I found a note in the paper two weeks ago with an envelope for a Christmas bonus. What can I do? Put cash in it and send it off to some address in Elkhorn? I can't write a check because there was no name. Hell, I'll do it. I am such a pushover. I wonder if the papers will remain thrown to the doorstep instead of simply being dropped way down at the end of the driveway. That mail person. Clever bastard. I am caught in a vice.
Ben Stein was on television with one of his stupid droll commentaries, as I recovered my coffee and dumped the paper snow onto the fireplace ledge. God I can't stand that guy. His trademark smirking vocal presentation just drives me nuts. And then there is the content. "If we just go out and spend money then we won't need a bailout." That is the solution. Do not save. Do not hold onto anything. Well, I hope Ben is holding onto plenty and I hope that his investment counselor is named Madoff. He is another of these totally 'removed' talking heads making believe that they have a regular job and some sort of semblance of a normal financial life. He does not. He makes more in a month then the average person makes in two years! He can spend all he wants and never get to the bottom. He probably has one of those super-secret black American Express cards (twenty thousand in fees just to have, or so I am told). He is like that creepy baseball player who just signed a 160 million dollar contract to play baseball for a few years. The guy has barely a high school diploma. A box of rocks who can throw a ball. Which means he will also be allowed to become an author, a television spokesperson and honored member of our terminally sick culture. At least Ben Stein is smart. He is a short little troll example of a creepy man, but he does have a brain and some real formal education.
We have a guy, down in Chicago, named Steve Chapman who writes columns in the Tribune. Now there is another dumbo, along with Stein (when it comes to putting out garbage which is nothing other than vaguely disguised neocon philosophy). His solution to the financial mess is inflation. Yes, a true, world class, never call home, idiot. And he is too young to remember 1979 and 80. A home loan back then was written for around fourteen percent interest. Thats about fifteen hundred a month for a ninety-five thousand dollar home. Say what? So you get the loan and the house. No problem. When the interest rates go down you can always refinance, right? No. You see, because of inflation of everything else, except your income (note that they are talking about lowering all wages just now, and look at all the companies dropping contributions to 401k plans....the plans they all touted and pushed in order to get out of more structured and disciplined pension plans), you lose your good credit. So you can't refinance. And it is your fault. Just ask the lender. Under such circumstance they are happy to tell you that you are a loser, unless the outsourcing of today means that the representative on the phone says the word 'loser' in such bad English that you cannot understand it. Steve Chapman is just throwing crap up against the wall. Inflation. My ass.
Now John Kass, he is different indeed. He is the new Royko of the Tribune, and they have been running his articles on the second page of the paper. His nemesis is Governor Rod. Dead Meat Rod, he calls him. Dead Meat Walking, as of this morning's below-zero edition. I love his writing. He even swipes at our hero and savior (Obama) by inferring that his latest appointment from Illinois has ties to the Illinois mob (deemed to be the 'we-will-never-die-or-run-out-of-kids' Daleys). I love that too. Obama needs plenty of detractors, lest he fall down in his pew from absolute adoration of Rick Warren, his new spiritual guru (since that last black preacher was found to be 'socially unacceptable'). Kass is wrong, of course. He did say Governor Rod's "I will not quit" speech was okay. Okay? It was a 'Checkers' quality oration. He was great. He was perfect. Even his awful bowling ball hairstyle was okay. He even bent forward and down, so you could see that is is thinning on top. Now I really liked that. He is one of us. Oh yes, he is dumb as a post and he has some real mental issues. So what. Look at Senator Byrd or some of those other nuts we have in there. Larry Craig? Ted Stevens? Jesus. We have some goodies. Kass thinks that Rod ought to quit. He thinks that Rod is staying in to drive the best deal he can get. Well, no kidding Kass! Where the hell have you been? This culture loves a great confession, as long as that confession points the finger at someone else. "I confess, he did it," ought to be part of the Pledge of Alligiance. We could slip it in, right at the end, while we covertly point at the person next to us. "I confess I did it," on the other hand, well, we have electrical appliances and special injections prepared for those, soon to be dead, special cases.
And so this miserable representation of a Sunday morning ends with two cups of strong Alterra coffee. I must go out in the garage and pull all the cords from my generator. The power went out last night. The Alliant Company, our local electrical co-op, decided to experiment. Since it was the coldest night in a year, they thought that it would be great if we all remembered how important Alliant really is. Especially at this time of the year. So I turned on the infernal generator, but I have not had time to wire the thing into my electrical system. So I had extension cords running all about. Not enough to run the lights in my office, however. So I have cards to finish. The damned infernal custom cards. What am I doing out here? Why am I not in Hawaii, spending the money Ben Stein tells me will save everyone? I am being wary. That is what I am doing. I am hunkered down out here, extension cords piled high, the wind and temperature near absolute zero, my cards strewn everywhere with glue all over, and Harvey, laying right here under this monitor, studiously ignoring my slow descent into nonsensical madness.
Ami Pedezhur, columnist with the New York Times, writes to us this day about the spawning of terrorism. You see, in her view, it goes all the way back to the sixties. It was just not called terrorism then. More high humor from supposedly intelligent writers, or maybe writers who simply have a goal other than that which they claim. You see, terrorism began when we wanted it to begin. It has been a very useful word, since it was coined and then converted into our modern linguistic medium. We actually have a war on terrorism. War on a word. Not a specific enemy, no that was back in the old days when we fought the terrible Hun (Germans), the Japs (well, you know who) and the Gooks (Vietnamese). Now we no longer need to specify an opponent, and that is so much more convenient for the military industrial complex and governmental leaders. Terrorism, even using the modern definition, is merely that activity which opposes any current government or force in control, with violence. What kind of violence does not matter, although it seems to be better for everyone if it involves suicide, bombs of any kind, and damage to 'innocent' victims. That we carpet bombed and burned Dresden, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, well, that would never ever be termed terrorism. Nor A-bombing Nagasaki or Hirosima. Those were not exactly military targets, and we could have picked military targets if we chose to at the time. So terrorism is really more like piracy. It goes way way back. In fact, it is all over the Old Testament. That we rail against terrorism all the time now is indeed true, but the question is why. Why do we so go on about it? Because it supports decisions to spend money and control people's lives. We won't even let our vaunted, and supposedly free, press view and report on such stuff anymore. We have not covered Iraq or Afghanistan anything like we covered Vietnam. The complex and the government did learn a lot from Vietnam. Tell the people nothing and they have nothing upon which to make decisions. Kill the reporters, if necessary. Bar the reporters from the return of our dead troops, from going to the funerals. It is all there right in front of us. We will always be at war against terrorism, unless intellect and sanity take over. Which is not likely. Oh yes, Barack is intelligent. There is no question about that. But does he want to give up the war on terror? Does he want to give up the perks available to people who maintain the war on terror? I don't know. This coming year is going to be a really interesting one. And it is portended by ominous talk on Obama's part. He wants a huge surge in Afghanistan. What for? Whom do we have to beat over there? The Taliban? Who the hell cares? The Taliban, last time around, eradicated the Opium production of that country. We took over and brought Afghanistan back to being the world's largest opium producer. So what are we doing there? Really. We don't have a clue. We are depending upon Obama. And the outlook is not good, not in this area.
Bob Herbert wrote of the end of the war on American workers. We have a new Labor Secretary coming in who is fond of the American workers, and unions even. Supposedly. This person has never been a Secretary of anything, other than a steno pool, perhaps. Take a look at the auto bailout. It is so badly written that Ford opted out. They would rather risk bankruptcy than take that worm medicine. At the top of the agreement is wage cutting. We have got to get the wages of American workers down to those of the Japanese companies in the U.S. who have American workers. The fact that those companies have not been here long enough to have pension obligations, well, that is ignored. The unions must also accept the fact that, instead of money going into the current worker's pension plans, under this bill, they will get some kind of equity transfer. Have we not heard enough of this kind of 'garbage financial talk' from these creeps? The Congressional creeps? The Republicans? So the bailout passed American Auto Workers, but it is a mighty cold and snowy world out there this December, if you have not noticed. And those executives and members of Congress still have their residence addresses online and in phone books. Firewood is to be found there. The only. I repeat. The only way that our leadership is going to make the changes you need to survive yourself and your family in any credible and comfortable way is to cause fear to live and breathe inside these dreadfully powerful people. It is just the way it works. It has always worked that way, except for brief respites too short to even mention. You either run them or they will run you. Take note of the last eight years. We have been run right into the ground in just about every area that can be mentioned. The only person, whom I have noticed, that has done anything at all about it is locked up in an Iraqi prison, being tortured by our people right this minute. He threw his shoes at George Bush. By God that took balls. By God that took good judgment. By God I love that guy. If it could only start a trend. Wherever that Bush clown goes, people throw shoes. Not at him, as that will get you twenty years in administrative maximum in this country. No, people should just throw shoes before him. Let him get the idea. Let him understand that God, and we, can punish very very harshly and for a very long time. This guy and his people hurt the hell out of us and we are a long way from being beyond that hurt. Do you feel it yet? This country is built upon a Puritanical base of Calvinistic thinking and is righteous in the presentation of those ideas and philosophy. It is time to get righteous indeed.
My cards are not done. I labor on into the night. The foil is hard to work with. But the effect is great. That the cards will be taken from their envelopes, briefly read and then discarded is not the issue (although I do indeed sometimes think about that). The issue is that it is meaningful for me to do it. It is good to think of the neat nature of every one of the people I am sending to. I thank God that I have fifty of them. Many people have none. It is a Merry Christmas, as it has been for many years, at least for me. And it is snowing again. My Advent trees stagger under the weight. I thought it could not snow more than last year but I was mistaken. Global warming is making it colder. I do not understand that, but I think that I am not supposed to. Sometimes global warming, the phrase, seems to sound like terrorism.
My cards are like the song, maybe: Knights in White Satin, never reaching the end, letters I've written, never meaning to send. There was a television show on the science fiction channel a while back. I liked it. Most of the show was hookum (everyone above a certain age had died of a virulent virus) but the show always opened with this really poignant scene. The protagonist was standing over an open fire, reading a letter he had written to his father that day (the father had, of course, died from the virus years before) and then burning it. There was no point to it. But there was every point to it. Letters I've written, never meaning to send.
Rick Warren. The man is just a studied case of applied stupidity, and the celebration of that whole concept. It finds favor with a male oriented population which seems to take its roots from the 'Cowboy mentality' of the late eighteen hundred's. The Gran Torino (AKA: Dirty Harry gets old) is a perfect example of this mentality. And Obama and the Dream Team are throwing a bone to this grousing rat pack of carrion feeding mongrels. Rick Warren wants homosexuals dead or reduced to sexual predator status. Now, how in God's name, can we have a guy like that say the invocation for our incoming savior? This man is part and parcel of the same pack of assholes who have taken our country to the brink of total devastation, caused us to lose all respect around the world, entered us into evil rendition arrangements with the slimiest of torturing characters, and so on. Why stop there? Jesus Christ, this man is emblematic of the kind of person who, in the Old Testament, the Lord would have smitten with a sweeping vengeance. But here he is, right up there in a place of honor. That just sucks, and I don't care if Obama thinks that will help unite this country. Get it here, and right now Barack, we do not want to be united with this shit or any of his followers. We overwhelmingly picked you because we wanted no more of these self-righteous and self-enriching creeps around us. Now get to work! Or become what you sought to rail against yourself. Or at least we thought you did.
MTV is throwing 15 new 'unscripted' reality shows up against the wall this coming season. It appears that their viewership is down almost twenty-five percent. Dah! You are putting crap out there for the audience to view. We, as television viewers, lack the ability to throw vegetables at you, so we just switch off. We do not want any more of that dunce-cap reality stupidity, no matter how much you keep hyping that it is more 'real' than anything that has come before. We have reality right here, where we are living, and we don't want any more of that. We don't care about Donald Trump, or chefs fighting in kitchens over more stupidity, or people chasing about on obviously (and badly) scripted races. Get over it or die. Television, as with the newspapers, is going right down the toilet unless it gets over the producer's nepotistic self-love and self congratulation. You have to make the effort to give the audience good stuff. If you don't then we sit out here and drink, or go back to reading, or play Scrabble, or something. Rick Warren is emblematic of this, as well. Applied stupidity. It is, at times satisfying, but it is the way of the loser. In school and out here. At work and at home.
I am working on my Christmas cards. I create them from card stock I order from Italy, then build them with foil from Germany and stamps from the good old USA. I use a black ink fountain pen to address the cards and then the same pen to write inside. The actual stamps are from the fifties (I collect stamps too). The great old six and eight cent Christmas stamps that were put out back then. I have fifty cards to finish. That is about as many as I have ever made. I have been as low as thirty-three. Now, I lose people for entirely different reasons than in years past. Back then I lost people because they moved and I never heard from them again, or they simply turned out to be bad apples. Now I lose them because they die! And that is disconcerting, indeed. I miss them. The ones that die. I still keep them in my book, but there they are to remind me that they are no longer here. Shit. Why do I spend all this time to do such a strange thing, in a world where people do not even bother, for the most part, to even go out and buy cards and send them off? Because it is important to me. I am not sure why. Maybe because I am a writer and I think that the written word is special. And the personal written letter or card, the most special of all. Reality cards, if you will, but well scripted ones.
Governor Rod spoke! He came out and, backed by the fiber transmitted to him through the absorption of my blogs, stood firm. Meanwhile, the pundits complain away about the fact that nobody supports this governor. Another crock! The governor does not need any of the support they seem to think he ought to have. This guy is at the helm of the Illinois ship and there is nothing anybody can do about it. Now, idiots, pray that the captain does not aim the ship to run up upon the rocks, because he can certainly do that, and in so many ways. I detailed a bunch of them. There are more. I don't like the guy, or his wife. But I sure understand his situation, and the role he was elected to perform. If I were Fitzgerald, the Federal Prosecutor (who seems to have gotten the idea that he is Javert, from the Victor Hugo novel; Les Miserable), I would tuck my tail in and shut my mouth. If Governor Rod chooses to focus on him, that Fed will find out, for the first time in his life, what public and private pain are all about. You stand, Governor Rod, just as you are, as a beacon against outrageous public prosecution.
There was some war protest song written and sung by some great singer in the sixties. It had words within it, to the effect "hip deep in the big muddy." I liked those protest songs of the Vietnam Era. We don't have such songs any longer. Clear Channel, the Fox of radio, has assured us of that. We must always be reminded that the war on 'The Oceanic Front' is going well. That we have had our asses handed to us in Iraq, Afghanistan is besides the point. What good would have protests done, anyway? Saved four thousand young men and women who died for nothing? Well, ask Dick Cheney. He said it was a necessary sacrifice. He lost nothing. He lost no children. Neither he, his wife, nor any of his craven spawn have lost one damn thing. Quite the opposite. He, and his family, have tremendous power, have enriched themselves twenty times over since the start of Iraq, and will continue to hold positions in our new American Aristocracy. That is, until children come to visit them with matches. To those Gold Star families out there, my heart goes out to you. I left 211 boys behind in Vietnam. I remember every one of them. All good Marines. I still think, all the time, about Corporal Fusner (18), Buck Sgt. Stevens (19) and Sugar Daddy, my Scout Sgt. At this time of the year it is hard not to. I am living and they are dead. I know they would celebrate my living but I cannot celebrate their passing. A glass of that Val de Flores, lifted to my lips for one sip on Christmas Eve will be the only clue that they are well remembered. Their names are clustered together on one block of that black wall I visited in Washington D.C. My name should be up there, but I got a 'get out of jail free' wound that night, and ended up discovering that I possessed a 'survivor's body.' Great. Maybe I am only here, in my own tattered form, simply to remember them.
I read a review in the New York Times that was bleak and dark. About one of my favorite movies called "It's a Wonderful Life." I cite it often in these blogs, especially at this time of year. The review was harsh, because so much of the movie was 'real,' in my opinion. And the reviewer gave away much of his own battered perspective on life by his writing. It is a problem for us real writers. We live a lot of what we write and vice versa. Anyway, this guy wrote about how the raucous and wildly crass times, as illustrated by the shots of Bedford Falls portrayed as the result of 'George' never having been born, were much more cheerful, alive and filled with success. Those shots, rather than the boring and staid placidity of the 'real' Bedford Falls Jimmy Stewart was still alive in. About that, all I can say is that if you love what Las Vegas has become, then you agree and deserve such perspective on life. If you think that the Dells, in Wisconsin, are just great in all their neon and crappy water slide idiocy, then you deserve the poor taste you somehow got from your parents. The reviewer also screws up the 'mysterious disappearance' of the eight thousand bucks which the evil Potter found and squeezes George over. The reviewer goes to a prosecutor to determine that this eight thousand would be treated as theft, and George thrown in jail. It would not. Not unless it could be proven that it was theft. George's idiot uncle, responsible for the loss, might have to answer some serious questions, with respect to the loss, but it would not be likely that he would be held for theft. Certainly not George, who only entrusted the money to his uncle. The movie is dark in parts, especially the interpersonal relationship's of George and his family and his relationship with his brother. But good God, have you looked around at relationships in this country lately? What is our divorce rate? What is the holiday get-together like for most people? I can't say the following about most all of film that has passed before me during my life. But, I would love to have written that screenplay, or the novel behind it (there was no novel). I love real people. People with too much weight, varicose veins and bad hair. I love people who lose control on occasion but reel themselves back in. I love people who do things they need to apologize for and then apologize. I love people who tell me that I am full of shit, and then argue appropriately that I really am. I love people who say no to what I want to do, so that I am forced to convince them. I love people who drink too much of my wine and get drunk, and then drive when they should not, and then suffer a bad hangover and call to apologize for things they cannot remember. Am I this way because of Fusner, Stevens, Sugar Daddy and the rest? Is what I feel, as my true humanity, nothing more than post traumatic stress disorder from the DSM IV manual?
I don't know. Joe Campbell said that you must work and toil to finally, and only possibly, enjoy bliss at the very center of your being. I have that. I know it. Even if I am McMurphy (One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest) inside some facility, unaware of where I really am, I have this bliss. I just know it. Merry Christmas.
Bernard Madoff is at home in his seven million dollar penthouse. He is wearing some sort of GPS anklet or bracelet so the authorities will know that he is in residence from nine p.m. until nine a.m., when he gets to go out for the day. He was supposed to qualify for this privilege (of not sitting in a dank crummy holding cell downtown) by putting up the penthouse (which he bought with stolen money) and getting four friends or family to sign responsibility for him. It is extremely denigrating to go to friends and family for this kind of favor, by the way. So he didn't do it. He put up the penthouse and then the court decided to let him out of getting the four people to sign. Outrageous? Of course. The Federal Prosecutors are about ninety percent successful at getting their intended victims held without bail (or getting the terms of the bail so onerous that it cannot be met) for 'flight risk' potential. They get this through normally, even for people who have no passport, and have never been out of the country (you gotta leave the country to evade the Feds, and that will only serve you for a short time, unless you are Marc Rich), and have no assets to use to support any kind of successful fugitive evasion. But, what do we have here? Madoff, if convicted, would serve the rest of his life in prison, easily, according to the mandatory sentence guidelines. He has a chateau in France. He has two huge offshore yachts, staffed and waiting. He has tons of cash in all kinds of foreign accounts. He does not need no stinking passport! Oh, and they took his wife's passport. Now that was meaningful. More crap. We are being handed more crap. Like Caroline getting that Senate seat (forgone conclusion there). Just crap, repackaged with a brown wrapper and shiny brown ribbon. Merry Christmas America. And you think Governor Rod is going to prison? Think again. Picture Madoff up there in his penthouse, overlooking all of New York, while you sit down there in your one room flat you can't even make the payment on. I encourage you 'normal' New Yorkers to begin looking skyward. Madoff is up there, enjoying the Argentinian wines I write about, and laughing. What are you doing? Sit there and think. Playing with matches is not always something you should be punished for.
Writing of Argentinian wine, I have found another. Now, you know I am not a connoisseur, since I don't drink at all (I do consume huge quantities of Alterra coffee) and, when I was drinking, way back there, I downed Barcardi rum with coca cola. So, take all wine stuff with a grain of salt. It snowed over a foot last night and the stuff is still coming down. Jeff, the guy who plows me out, because i am not a John Deere kind of a guy, has had to come three times because his plow is not all that big. On the last trip I gave him my last bottle of Don David. You know, the good stuff that my guests have been raving about. Jeff frowned and smiled at the same time. The Don David is going to go down the hatch, for sure, but Jeff is more a Blatz kind of guy himself (I know, I know, they don't make that old beer anymore). I served this new stuff last night, which I found at a butcher shop in Port Washington on this recent trip. I was actually in there buying head cheese, a German delicacy which you, being assumed to be normal, will not eat. It was for my mother. She is not normal. Anyway, I spotted this dust covered bottle of Argentinian wine. It was priced at $7.99, an 06, and a Malbec from my favorite valley (the Mendoza). So I took it to the counter and asked the meat-remnant-covered butcher about it. "I don't know nuthin' about the wine. Its been here since I bought the place last year. That one's old though. You can have it for five bucks." So I bought it along with the head cheese.
It is called Trapiche. The company putting it out in the Mendoza valley is quite aptly named the Bodega Trapiche Company. Bodega being the key word here. My guest's drank it last night, but not the whole bottle. They just could not get that far. One of my connoisseur friends stated "it has the approach of fuel starved single-engined Cessna, the attack of a studded wet leather whip, and the finish of a greenish brown troll, like the one who lives behind the slats under your back porch." They drank almost all of it anyway, because I was saving the Don David for Jeff, and my supply is low. One neat thing, however. I poured the remainder of the bottle onto a clear white place in the snow this morning. It was beautiful! The snow has since tried to accumulate over it, but the intensity of color and the acidity of the brew has continued to overwhelm the tremendous building efforts of even this blizzard. If I order five cases, open the bottles and apply liberally up and down my driveway, I will not only add an amazing new color element to my home, but I will probably not have to pay Jeff for the rest of the winter. These 'Bodega' guys and gals have happened upon something they, as yet, have no clue about. This may be as good a product as synthetic rubber!
