Luang Prabang, Laos – Always wanted to file a story for you from Luang Prabang. If there’s a place IN the world where you wanted to get away from it all, this is it, way up the Mekong River in the landlocked mountainous up-country of Laos, ‘The Land of a Million Elephants’, or as the French would put it, during their 100-year occupation of the former French Indochina, ‘The Land of a Million Irrelevants’.
The Franco condescension of these friendly people and land is because little of material value is produced here outside of fine quality silverwork, distinctive brightly colored hill tribe weavings, opium, and jungle hardwoods. No rice. Everything is imported. Also, that’s the way the French are.
The Japanese tourists shuffle in an excited tour-guided cluster, the Israelis travel in groups of no less than six, the Americans are in a demanding hurry, the Scandinavians, above everybody, travel as confident couples, the Germans stomp around ‘like Robocop’, Su says, and the French sort of glide with their nose in the air, with the impression of proprietary rights, like the owner of a hotel, passing through the lobby.
They surely left their mark here, in the colonial culture, architecture, second language, and fine dining. Whereas Saigon was dubbed the ‘Paris’ of the Orient’, and Phnom Penh an ambassador’s leisurely outpost, Vientiane was a sleepy, low-drama backwater capital, and the ancient imperial city of Luang Prabang served as an isolated haven for French fugitives and, apart from the insurgency, a Parisian holiday extraordinaire.
You can see why. Like the Mekong flowing by, everything here moves slowly. Time seems to stop. An artist, or a writer, or anybody for that matter, could do well to recoup or create here.
“See what I mean?” I said to my two traveling friends. “See why I wanted to bring you here?”
“It’s so peaceful,” said Bryan.
A person can take in all the attractions in two days, including the waterfalls downriver, or the Buddha caves upriver, but you may wish to linger longer.
After three days, my two friends and I sat at the Luang Prabang airport watching a mechanic on a ladder, hand-tightening nuts beneath the wing of a twin-engine turbo-prop, the safest way in and out of the city via flights from Vientiane, Savannakhet, or Chiang Mai, Thailand. The other routes are by river when navigable, or a horrendous, grinding mountainous two-day trip overland from the capital.
So, with bandits, the army, and revolutionaries out on the land transport routes, according to Paul in Vientiane, our best bet, given our time schedule anyway, was to fly.
“I hope that isn’t our flight,’ chuckled Bryan, nodding out the window toward the tarmac.
“It is,” said Su, our lovely interpreter and the former ‘Miss Phuket’, who ran from the tsunami, scaled the eight-foot wall at the Tap Lamu naval base, held onto a coconut tree, prayed hard, and lived. Looking with concern at the maintenance man on the ladder, she said, “I would like to see, you know, zzzzzzzzrrrrrrrtt, with a, you know,” she said, holding her hands like she was holding a big DeWalt power tool or a grenade launcher.
Earlier in the blistering sun, we had climbed the 665 steps to the top of That Phousi, the great temple that offers a breathtaking view of the city. That’s all there is to do, but eat, drink, and lazily stroll the bazaars along the streets and river. Maybe take a boat trip. Fine dining with good French wines.
Along with a bevy of rude Japanese tourists, we visited the national museum, where among priceless intricately-crafted gifts of jewels and jade presented to the former royal family, there was a cheesy cardboard crackerjack prize replica of the Apollo lunar lander from the U.S. that Richard Nixon thought was appropriate, but was as out-of-place as a velvet Elvis at Sotheby’s, causing Bryan and I to stop speaking English and slink away from the exhibit in embarrassment.
“It’s like something you’d buy out of the NASA gift shop,” laughed Bryan as we left the museum.
Did Nixon send that as a joke? Was the current Lao PDR People’s Democratic Revolutionary government putting it on display as a joke to us, a cruel indictment of Americans? A slap in the face for our foolish involvement in Southeast Asia? Over here, losing face is everything.
“I think they’re serious,” said Bryan.”
After the disturbingly brutal cultural humiliation of the museum, we had a half day to burn before our flight, so we sauntered down to the river, where any of a dozen boatmen will take you upriver to the Buddha caves, or downriver to the waterfalls.
The ‘uniform’ of a boatman is simple; old, over-worn and over-washed long sleeve cotton shirt, old sun-bleached tattered trousers, like blue or maroon, and flip flops. Boatmen dress pretty much the same everywhere, like rickshaw drivers. The motorcycle taxi drivers dress the same. A car taxi or mini-van driver will have black shoes, nice shirt and slacks.
Bus, train, subway drivers all wear simple uniforms, usually blue or grey, as well as personal chauffeurs and captains of your flight and cruise ship, decked out with gold braid. One’s life is no less at peril in an aircraft or a longtail boat, but that surely isn’t the criteria, is it?
No. Anybody can drive a fucking longtail boat; the uniform and gold braid represents a degree of qualification and passenger psychic comfort, if not respect, just short of what might be shown royalty. And if you should get too surly with a stewardess, she just might go tell the captain and have you removed from the flight.
Yeah, you really wouldn’t want to see the captain of your flight come aboard dressed like a raggedy-ass Burmese fisherman, now, would you?
Bongs on The Mekong
We must have been obvious. He must have recognized us right away, that boatman, who approached us. We had a notion of just going out for an hour or so, since the river trips consumed nearly a full day.
“You want boat trip?” he asked.
“We only want to go out for an hour or two,” I told him.
“Can do,” he replied. “I have small boat. This way.”
He led us down the embankment to his boat, took us across to the other side where he picked up his sister-in-law, I think it was, and her friend, who we took ten minutes downriver and deposited off near a tiny river village, the girls getting out gingerly and giggly with their umbrellas and long Lao skirts.
On the way back upriver, the boatman pulled up behind a long, tall sandbar where we were obscured from river traffic and dropped anchor. He then went to the rear of the long narrow boat, excusing himself as he passed between us, and magically produced a beautifully burnished bamboo bong ‘bubbler’ being brought by said boatman from a small aft compartment, along with a square block of wood of prepared, finely minced local Lao bud. He was locked and loaded for interested clientele.
Su declined, but he filled the bowl six times for two each for himself, Bryan and me, then dropped us back off at the dock below the city. Bryan gave the guy a thousand baht, a very, very, good tip that said he could take the rest of the day off, and tomorrow, too, and we more or less meandered up the street, looking for a cool drink and testing out our new world view.
“My mouth feels like the bottom of a litter box,” I told my friends.
“How did he know?” asked Bryan. “Are we that obvious?”
After years and years of not being able to access ANY CASH WHATSOEVER in Luang Prabang, they finally discovered the value of economic enterprise, and have realized tourists will spend money in their country if they have some way get to it. As previously noted, things move slowly there, like the river.
So now, amidst major ‘Visit Lao’ tourist marketing, even Luang Prabang has a bank, an exchange, and an ATM. If you can imagine the nightmarish predicament of being without money in a foreign country, the government of Lao had you set up for it.
You had to go back across the border…through immigration…back through customs, and…yeah, something like a nightmare. No plastic, no Euros, no traveler’s checks. Thai Baht or US dollars. Take twice the amount you expect to spend.
“It’s good,” Bryan repeated to the Lao lady vendor selling fabrics outside the temple. She kept holding his Euro notes up to the sun and looking through them with suspicion. Hadn’t she seen Euros before? The place was crawling with foreigners, mostly French. We were the only Americans for a thousand miles, or at least a couple of blocks.
Reassuring the money was good, Su rattled off something in Thai, which the lady seemed to understand, being first cousins to the Thai in language and ancestry.
“Good everywhere IN the world,” said Bryan. “Better than the dollar.”
___
The ‘Golden Triangle’ is just upriver a couple hundred kilometers, so light to extremely serious hard drugs are easy to find. They find you. If you’re traveling alone, all the taxi drivers down in Vientiane offer everything in a whisper.
“Marijuana?”
“Mai ow, mee lao. Already hab.” (‘Mai ou. Mi lao’. Don’t want it. Already have it).
“Hashish?”
Already hab.”
“Opium?”
“Already hab.”
“Heroin?”
“Already hab.”
“Laydee?”
“Already hab.”
“Taxi?”
“Yeah. You can take me to the morning market.”
__
No. I didn’t really already have all those offerings – it’s just the best way to ward of any vendor, especially if you use their lingo.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the Vientiane morning market and a few silver shops around town are the only places in Southeast Asia where you can find those hand-crafted silver lighter cases with the dragon on one side, and pheasant of the other. Balance, Su said. The dragon and the pheasant. I’ve had several stolen from me, both here, and back in the States.
I had gone to Vientiane earlier, not to find the lighter cases, but to visit the Thai embassy and contact an old friend for the comedy tour. He had a terrific Hitler imitation; you know the one at the Reichstadt, and in Bavaria with Eva, doing the whole act Chaplinesque, speeded-up, 90 frames per second or whatever it was before talking motion pictures. Even in a bowling shirt, it looked like Hitler.
Paul could do the thing with his shock of hair, the lips, the clenched fists, the rocket-like straight-arm Nazi salute, and the manic rolling eyes in a chilling imitation of that piece of footage that everyone but Rocky Ahmadinejad has seen.
The act is hilarious to the point of rib-cracking at the Vientiane beer garden after six pitchers between four people. I have him do it every time I see him. He could do Hitler, and I could do Farrakhan.
If he could work it in some way with a military crowd, you know, comparing any contemporary tyrant with Hitler. ‘You gotta know your audience. You gotta know your audience,’ Manny, my former mentor and handler, always used to say. He always used to say shit twice*, I don’t know why. Emphasis? Imaginary friend?
Ain’t but two kinds of people normally needs ‘handlers’. Professional politicians and prize fighters, mostly. Maybe ditzy high-profile Hollywood stars and mob bosses. A lot of people have personal trainers, or ‘my people’, as in, ‘I’ll have my people get in touch with your people’, but only a relative few of us have a need for handlers. Manny needed a handler hisself, to get a handle on all that bad press that spilled out of the nasty chapter that ended our professional relationship.
Well, you could know your audience, but still have a stale, inappropriate or irrelevant message. That’s what I told him. Especially if your serve was off.
And he said, “You know something, Bic? I’m gonna tell you something. You think you know everything, don’t you? You think you’re smarter than me, don’t you?”
And I said, “That’s not telling me something, Manny. Those are questions,” at which time the restraints that usually barely contained his latent sociopathic tendency became unbound, and in a fit he ‘went Pentacostal’ in a state of advanced agitation, and issuing forth a plume of vitriol, followed thereafter by an assault upon my physical person.
Oh, yeahhhhh, of course there was alcohol involved. Tequila, to be exact, leading to the referees being called in to stop the contest, and a decision to my satisfaction in the end, but that’s what tequila can do for you, and trying to represent yourself in court.
Mr. Ferguson, my advisor and ‘the brains’ of our outfit, or so he liked to think, attributed Manny’s outburst as a result of failing to assiduously follow his med schedule and my whole asshole attitude, your honor, he said, which was inadmissible, as was, not being able to ‘see the forest for the fucking trees’, which he was advised was demeaning to the defendant, had nothing to do with the determination of the charges at hand, and was stricken from the record during the preliminary hearing, as I recall. The tequila had nothing to do with it, Marta, a known liar, so testified.
Mr. Ferguson, a very large, beast of a man in both manner and breath, had been an associate of Manny’s for years, so I wasn’t surprised whose side he’d come down on. He didn’t particularly like me (since the day he overheard me say to a promoter in a phone conversation, “Me, Manny, and Moe, the ‘Man-Child’ ”), although he once said I had potential (‘you can be somebody someday,’ he said one day after training. ‘Like, a fascinating public figure?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You need bloodlines fo’ a job like dat. But you could be ranked. With the right agents and the right venues, me an’ Manny can take you almost all the way to the top.’). Manny had said the same. If I stayed away from ‘that bad crowd’.
If it wasn’t for the debt they owed my dad, he or Manny wouldn’t have had anything to do with me at all, least ways in an advisory capacity. They said so.
No class. A trailer trash incident. That whole damned episode crossed my mind while thinking about Paul’s Hitler sketch, and here, all these years later, those words stuck. “A Whitewash Salem Witch Hunt. A…Whitewash…Salem…Witch…Hunt.”
Funny now. Comic. A contentious family squabble that had screenplay potential written all over it. Manny, Marta, or Mr. Ferguson might see it differently. Manny kept saying, ‘I shoulda played the Race Card...I shoulda played the Race Card.’ Sure, but just like on tour, Manuelo, you gotta know your audience.
Damn. I was talking about Paul’s Hitler imitation for the tour, and ended up going OFF on Manny.
Having left Paul’s card in Thailand, I couldn’t remember his number and couldn’t reach him at the bowling league, so I had two full days to wait until they sorted out that lie at the embassy and issue me a new Type ‘B’, non-immigrant, multiple-entry visa, a sure-enough hassle these days since that sicko, John Mark Carr, remember him? confessed to the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey, got extradited from his fugitive rat hole in Pattaya, didn’t do it after all, but was on the run for some other kind of porno rap in California, and ended up getting some major negative reviews in the news, giving English teachers in Thailand a bad name, and giving all foreigners staying over 90 days a major headache from the new tight-ass Thai immigration laws.
Everywhere IN the world, countries are beefing up their border security and tightening their immigration laws, not just Myanmar.
“What’s the gun for, Tony?”
“I don’t know, Frank. Maybe I’m just, how you say? BARAnoi.”**
Yes, clinically speaking, but there’s justifiably paranoid reason, in which case, it’s not technically paranoia. It’s fear. It’s the border, there’s two big-ass German Shepherds, and those guys in uniforms and AK47s. And that’s on the friendly side. That’s not Myanmar. We’re talking Seattle, here.
So it’s best to consume the entirety of any illegal contraband than try to sneak it across an international border. For that, you needed to talk to Manny, who spent a few years as a coyote down on the U.S./Mexican border running drugs, illicit pharmaceuticals, and people, mostly.
I asked him once about where he got all his investment seed money, which, according to my sixth sense, I deeply suspected was illegitimate, and he told me, “I usually tell people, ‘That’s between me and my accountant’, but since it’s you, Bic, I’ll tell you,” he said. “That little man inside the ATM.”
“Huh?”
“You know what ATM stands for, don’t you?” Manny asked.
“What?”
“’All…The…Money’. You heard it from me first, Amigo. Don’t use it in your comedy routine. I’ll take you down, publicly.”
I was supposed to be a thousand kilometers away, being serious and researching UXO on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but sitting with a Beer Lao at a riverside café on stilts, watching the boatmen and the Mekong meander by the dozen or so young men playing soccer on the sand below me, seemed like a better idea.
Like Holly surprised me one day by saying, “Fuck ‘should’.” Evidently, she’d given it prior thought. I tried serious once, for about thirty years or forty years, and un-serious seems to work a whole lot better for me. The game down on the sand wasn’t serious. They weren’t keeping score. Just playing. A novice kick sent the ball sailing into the tall reeds. Another errant kick sent it into the river.
They invited me to join them but two things stopped me; age and common sense. I was still coming off that nagging knee injury suffered after stepping off a curb a month earlier in Ayutthaya, rendering me momentarily incapacitated of movement, and considering replacement knee surgery, right there, on the spot.
Although a real doctor would have probably prescribed rest, a helpful taxi driver in Vientiane said the best thing to do for a knee, and the best way to consume opium if you didn’t have a pipe, was to ‘eat it’.
Much to my surprise, after about a half hour, the knee discomfort and feeling in my lower extremities diminished to the point where the faster I walked, the better it felt, and ended up sprinting in tropical heat for one hundred, maybe a hundred fifty yards along the riv…did I already tell you this?
No need then to explain laying soaked with perspiration and panting for a couple of hours on the floor of that cool concrete pavilion, waiting for my heart rate and the swelling to recede, and oblivious to the hundred or so aerobics students doing their evening workout routine around me to bad disco music.
“Ah you okay dokay, Mistah?” they kept asking.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just trying to catch my breath. Waiting for Travolta and the endorphins to kick in.”
“Travorta and the Dolphins?”
Yeah. They’re a disco band.”
Above me, a large square sign with red letters, and a big red arrow pointing to a big red ‘X’, and no map, declared, “YOU ARE HERE.”
*years later, I asked a psychiatrist what he thought about someone saying everything twice, and he laughed and said, ‘Imaginary friend?’ I asked my editor, and he said, ‘Redundancy.’
**One of my lines from ‘Scarface’, which I co-wrote the screenplay with Oliver Stone. The original script read, "I don't know Frank. It gives me a sense of security." Like the change?
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Man on Fire
Man On Fire - Tons Of Notes
Ayutthaya, Thailand 2/2008 - It's been a while, but I've got notes!
That business about sprinting 150 yards along the Mekong riverfront in Vientiane like a man on fire in midday heat? Stop me if you've already heard it.
Standing out on the dried up sands of the Mekong, now shunken to 1/8 it's high-water size, the lights of Vientiane's awakening economy were reflected in enterprises lining the riverfront; banks, bars, bistros, bakeries, bed & breakfasts, baht exchanges, bazaars, and boutiques surrounded the block-long waterfront temple.
The city is a sort of magical place where the French presence is still strong, the pace slower, and the people very kind, graceful and friendly. Among the other farang (western, non-asian) tourists, the French stand out by their flair. There's usually some kinda scarf involved.
Since the beginning of time those Mekong waters had been draining from the Tibetan plateau, south through China, Myanmar, Lao, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam before emptying into the South China Sea. I wondered what was pulling me there.
This was the capital of Siam and the location of the royal palace before moving downriver to Bangkok. The glorius Khmer temples and architecture were left in ruins by invading Burmese back when the French and Indians were fighting on the North American continent.
Stopped here to celebrate Digger's 22nd birthday, enroute to and from Thai embassy in Vientiane, Lao. That explains why I was sprinting along the Mekong riverfront, a full-bore, flat-out, heartpounding wind sprint for 150 yards adjacent to a tourist-crowded pedestrian sidewalk in midday heat as a cure for a wrenched knee.
I hadn't experienced exertion to that extent since basketball practice in '79, or lifting those marine batteries off of my crushed foot last summer.
Last summer. Still no water to my place on the rez, no electricity. I've got the solar panels and the batteries, but I still need the whatchamacallit to run the whole shebang.
So, where was I? Thinking, 'I can't challenge Downs for his position (3rd) in the tennis lineup, and I can't do that until I get past Wilbert (Randy Wilbert, 5th).' And that won't happen on these lungs, nor these knees. Sixth man, low man on the totem pole, but good enough to play for tournament points and fend off the guys in the lower ranks of the order, and good enough to teach those kids over at Komaneeyakhet School, across the lake at the Wat.
______
Feed The Monk
This shit is farrrrr too rambling.
There's no single, consistent, coherent train of thought through the whole thing, so far. Trying to knock off a year of rust. Or do you follow? Are you with me? Can I get an 'Amen'?
One is supposed to say 'Amen' after the monk finishes giving you his blessing after you make your offering.
He was in line over at 7-11, across the street from the train station where I got off from a fitfull overnight from Nhon Khai, just this side of the Mekong from Vientiane, you can check it on the map, fitfull because of the aching knee from the run, and from the freezing air-conditioned compartment.
Anyway, one can always use blessings, right? so I tried to catch him before he paid, and had an idea of getting him one of those pastries they like, and one of those yogurt drinks, since I never have rice unless I buy it, but here he came on out, and so I run over there and put fifty baht in his totally empty begging bowl. I don't know what he had under his sleeve from the 7-11, but he bought something. Anyway, I forgot the amen. And I also forgot the wai. That's how stupid I am.
I also, and I hate to admit this, but I also forgot to get exactly what I needed in Lao, the express purpose of my trip. You gotta SAY, 'multiple-entry', 'one-year'. there's rules. And you can't assume the paperwork's right.
New rules, I might add. Everything is tightening up. I see where you need a passport, a driver's license, a birth certificate, a urine sample and DNA evidence now just to...what was it? gain access into......
....your grocery account. You thought I was going to say, 'Canada', right?
Yeah. It's not just me being paranoid, which I accept, I am. The doctors agreed. They look up my ass every time. Department of Homeland Security. Not the doctors. I'm on their terrorist watch list, but you gotta go through a whole bunch of shit just to get your name off it, and it's not just the one-way ticket business. Every single time I board a flight or come home, it's the same shit, and as a red, white & black all-american purple heart vietnam vet, I take offense.
It ain't me you're lookin' for, babe.
_____
What Did You Just Say To Me?
There's this bird right outside the window here that keeps saying, 'For Real, For Real, For Real.'
and those frogs or lizards or whoever's saying it, down there on the pond by the bungalow in the jungalow - I can't even repeat what they're saying in English, because it's far too vulgar and explicit, and to the Thai, it's probably all lizard jibberish, but in English it's clear as a bell, and I was wondering, 'are they just saying that to me?'
No, not the 'fuck you' lizards. This was some rude shit. I know, I'm bad and profane at times, but there's just some shit you shouldn't say, either in print or in a comedy act, which has a LOT of latitude regarding 'crossing the line' of acceptable public prudence, even in a combat zone, where people can get their back up about body bags and such.
What the hell. They were saying...
....can't bring myself to say it. Although I've said some shameless things, and carried out some shameless acts, I've got to rein it in somefuckingwhere along the line of decency.
it was just too plain rude.
they're still out there. wait till the rainy season.
______
Fight to Die
Digger said he and Tilo were driving in one of the TVC (tsunami vol. ctr.) trucks one day, when he asked Tilo, 'You ever hit an animal in Thailand?'
Tilo said, 'No.'
No sooner were the words out of his mouth, Digger said, when a cat loped out in front of the truck, and, 'SPLAT!'
__
You try not to screech your tires on a motorbike, because everybody looks up and you feel like a fool. Thai dogs are notorious for laying in the road, and you always see some limping around on three legs, as traffic-wary as they appear to be.
Rolling through Khuk Khak village, a cat strolled out three paces into the street in front of me, not looking up, totally unconcerned of any traffic, and exuding the distinct impression that it had all nine of it's lives remaining, caused me to screech my tires. The people gathered there at the noodle stand all looked up, the cat, a calico, looked up in shock and flitted on across the street in advanced haste.
I gave it a scowl and asked it, like the Thai do the dogs lying in the road, 'You want fini? You want die?'
__
The dogs here often run in packs, and don't fight the way American dogs do. I've witnessed some horrific dog fights over here that have stopped traffic. They just don't stop. It goes on and on, and the sounds are vicious and satanic.
Sitting at a restaurant table with an American guest and P' Su, a dog fight broke out next door and continued to such an extent in front of the raised-floor that the policemen sitting at an adjacent table jumped up and began blowing their whistles, two Swedish couples grabbed their children and moved to the center of the restaurant, a man from the house next door ran out and stumbled over the small hedge, tumbling into the yard, Bill got up and went over to get a better look, and hundreds of stunned onlookers attending a large fair and concert event on the adjacent lot all took in the spectacle.
Neither dog would yield, and neither would yelp or whine as they went after each other so violently that they ignored the rocks, sticks, whistles, clapping, and shouts of anyone courageous enough to attempt an intervention, kind of like the UN and nations at war. The small black dog was defending the restaurant turf, and the big dog could go anywhere he wanted to, and the small black dog was saying, 'no you can't.'
When it fiiiiiiiinally ended, to the relief of everybody in the immediate vicinity, I said, 'In Amer-eegah, we no hab. Dog fi three may fi seconds...fini...no fi long ti.'
P' Su replied, 'In Thai LAND, dog fi to die. No brrrreak. Fi to die.'
__
Stepped across a cobra last week. Evidently not the spitting kind (King Cobra) that can blind you accurately at a dozen paces. This guy was little, about two feet long, deadlier then his mama, they say. And it looked just like any other snake, making his way behind the cooler, so I turned him around with a spongemop and he raised up and spread his fan out, and I thought, 'Oh SHIT! A cobra!' And before he went off the porch and under the deck, he raised up again and fanned out, just to make certain, and I thought, 'You're a fucking cobra, FOR SURE!'
That's why the glass house is up. Everything, up. Up.
And that's why the Thai build their houses on stilts, right? That, and air, and water during the rainy season. Makes perfect sense. Only since cement have they laid the flat slab houses. the Thai LOVE concrete. It's cool. It's cheap. Anyone can hab a hou.
_____
Thai TV
Showed up on Thai television after being called from the studio audience, 'COME ON UP!' on a game show, 'Name That Tune,' and although I'm familiar with a number of popular Thai radio tunes, I sure as hell didn't know their titles, but as senseless as it seemed, I went onstage, live.
The reigning champion had these tall-ass stacks of money in front of him and I was thinking there's no fucking way I'm gonna beat this guy, and as soon as we began the first round, they started the song and the guy immediately hit his buzzer.
'NAME THAT TUNE,' said the host, pointing at the champ. The Champ says some shit in Thai, and the host says, 'Yoooooouuuuuur're RIGHT!' and they give him more money.
Round two, same thing. The champ hit his buzzer as soon, and I mean, as soon as the first note came out, you know, like you can do with an oldie but goodie. They give him more money, and we go on to round three, and I'm thinking, 'I'm gonna beat that sonofabitch to the buzzer this time', so as soon as they dropped the needle on the record, I slapped my buzzer.
Everything stopped for a second. I beat the champ to the buzzer. The studio audience said, 'OHHHHHH?'
The host, stunned, said, 'OHHHHHH?'
The champ said, 'OHH?
After recovering his composure, the host spun and pointed his finger at me and said, 'NAME THAT TUNE!'
After a second's flustered hesitation, I spit out, 'Mai Khao Jai?' ('I don't understand').
'HHHRRRRRNNNNTTT' went an in-house buzzer. WRONG!
The host turned to the champ, pointing and saying, 'Name That Tune!' to which the champ responded accurately, and they gave him more money and the audience clapped and cheered.
After the commercial break, the host says, 'Although you didn't win any money today, we don't want you to leave empty-handed, so we're going to give youuuuuuuuu...ASETACHOPSTICKS!'
woke up in hysterics, something I haven't done in a long time.
end -
Ayutthaya, Thailand 2/2008 - It's been a while, but I've got notes!
That business about sprinting 150 yards along the Mekong riverfront in Vientiane like a man on fire in midday heat? Stop me if you've already heard it.
Standing out on the dried up sands of the Mekong, now shunken to 1/8 it's high-water size, the lights of Vientiane's awakening economy were reflected in enterprises lining the riverfront; banks, bars, bistros, bakeries, bed & breakfasts, baht exchanges, bazaars, and boutiques surrounded the block-long waterfront temple.
The city is a sort of magical place where the French presence is still strong, the pace slower, and the people very kind, graceful and friendly. Among the other farang (western, non-asian) tourists, the French stand out by their flair. There's usually some kinda scarf involved.
Since the beginning of time those Mekong waters had been draining from the Tibetan plateau, south through China, Myanmar, Lao, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam before emptying into the South China Sea. I wondered what was pulling me there.
Maybe it was a ride forty years ago in a helicopter provided by my uncle, riding north to south along the other side of the Annamite moutain range running through SE Asia. At 4,000 ft., looking westward into Laos, a pre-sunset rainstorm had created a misty pink and purple curtain-like veil over the mountains, serene and breathtaking against a backdrop of war. At the time, I thought some day to return and explore the other side in a more peaceful time.
Clustered near the city's fountain, over by the beer garden, tuk tuk drivers asked me daily, 'Tuk tuk, Sir? and at night, whispered, 'Mariwah-na? Lay-dee?'
'Am I that easy a mark?' I asked one driver.
'I hab everything,' he said. 'Mariwah-na, hashish, opium...herion...lay-dee.'
'Have you got anything for a sore knee?'
____
Down south, the shower caddy venture played out. You could've called it an enterprise, sure. Overstocked inventory, illegal immigrant issues and we, uh, whaddayacallit?
Think outside the box. We needed to...'diversify,' is the word that held me up. We needed to diversify, they said. Think outside the box. The whole thing fell flat so we shifted over into the development of an outsourced off-shoot to the Slim Buttes Auxilliary of the Smithsonian Institution Museum of Aviation History, Sub-orbital Flight.
Forgoing some of the sexy, later models like the B-1, or the SR 71, we're focusing on WWI aircraft. We worked out some of the technicalities of the fuselage and landing gear, and simplified the entire assembly process for the wing struts, thanks to an insightful suggestion from Wan. So, that's moving forward. Right now, out of the fourteen aircraft we've built here in Thailand, ten have already been given away.
Stop me if you've already heard this. The high wire act? The Bob Hope Commemorative comedy tour to Baghdad? 'The African American Bowhunter'? Stop me if you've heard it.
Like I said, it's been a while, and the trailer on the rez got robbed twice, and they took my laptop, tools, and some other stuff, and before that, over here, well, never mind. Haven't felt like writing.
Avoid redundancy, they said. But they also said, 'A good tale is worth telling twice.'
I could see home furnishings, but jewelry? Bamboo and coconut jewelry? That was the problem, they said, we wudden thinking outside da box.
They envisioned wire and sea shell necklaces and bracelets, like, thinking along the wire line, an essential component of the shower caddy, and going with the wire and shell thing, and with the help from the Myanmar, we could keep our production down and expand into, you know, other markets...like, you know...marketing potential...you know.
As vague as that sounded, we proceeded, me and the myanmar crew, but the early give-away pilot models were scratching the girl's throats and wrists, and after a couple of days, they quit wearing them, and there were immigrant issues, and the Myanmar tore down their camp to leave, but then ended up rebuilding just adjacent, there at the intersection of the Sofitel Road and the road to the temple, another, bigger camp, housing some 300 people, most of whom are now employed as laborers in the rebuilding of the Sofitel hotel, the five-star resort on the beach that got wiped out, and is now, here for the last year or so, slowly being reconstructed.
It'd be hard to say about the ghosts, the whole area is totally rebuilt. in Khao Lak, three new 7-11s, four new optical shops, six new tailors. Whole place - rebuilt. Third-year tsunami anniversary, ho-hum. Back to business. Back to Euros.
That's in Khao Lak. Out in Thung Maphrao, the location of the glass house project ('Welcome to the Nature'),* where I teach English to four classes of 3rd through sixth graders once a week, it's totally Thai, and they're making me learn the lingo out of neccesity.
A strange phenomena awaited me when the students arose at the command of one of the bigger girls, 'All Students Stand!' she said, then with the clasped hands wai, they all said in unison, 'Good morning, Teacher', and later, 'thank you, Teacher,' whenever I said, 'Very good.' At the end of class, they all rise, wai, and say again, 'Thank you, Teacher.'
'That kind of respect doesn't happen in America,' I told my Thai colleague. 'There, the students shoot the teachers.'
__
"Repeat after me...'What are you looking at? Have you got a problem?' No 'hab'...'haVE'. HaVE."
They're not accustomed to using their teeth to make the 'V', or the 'th' requiring extending the tongue to touch the bottom of the teeth. Much less, 'L', and 'R', or 'ch' and 'sh', sounds we take for granted.
"LLLLLLLLook. Same same 'Helllllllllo'." Which they can say.
Realizing a need to unhitch my cerebral and academic approach to one that's MORE FUN, I taught them a version of 'Ask Your Mom For Fifty Cents', a popular reservation birthday greeting song commonly aired on the local radio.
'Ask Your Mom For Ha Sip Baht'; and they picked right up on it, clapping along and laughing, but that's a lot for a kid to be asking for, relatively speaking, given the value of fifty cents these days.
_____
Digger is teaching math, and Melanie, English, at the international school here in Ayutthaya, a definite stop on the temple tour, a hour north of Bangkok. An ancient imperial city without stoplights, every intersection is a free-for-all, Up 2 U, thus, you see chalk outlines and bits of broken glass and plastic at many intersections.
This was the capital of Siam and the location of the royal palace before moving downriver to Bangkok. The glorius Khmer temples and architecture were left in ruins by invading Burmese back when the French and Indians were fighting on the North American continent.
Stopped here to celebrate Digger's 22nd birthday, enroute to and from Thai embassy in Vientiane, Lao. That explains why I was sprinting along the Mekong riverfront, a full-bore, flat-out, heartpounding wind sprint for 150 yards adjacent to a tourist-crowded pedestrian sidewalk in midday heat as a cure for a wrenched knee.
I hadn't experienced exertion to that extent since basketball practice in '79, or lifting those marine batteries off of my crushed foot last summer.
Last summer. Still no water to my place on the rez, no electricity. I've got the solar panels and the batteries, but I still need the whatchamacallit to run the whole shebang.
So, where was I? Thinking, 'I can't challenge Downs for his position (3rd) in the tennis lineup, and I can't do that until I get past Wilbert (Randy Wilbert, 5th).' And that won't happen on these lungs, nor these knees. Sixth man, low man on the totem pole, but good enough to play for tournament points and fend off the guys in the lower ranks of the order, and good enough to teach those kids over at Komaneeyakhet School, across the lake at the Wat.
______
Feed The Monk
This shit is farrrrr too rambling.
There's no single, consistent, coherent train of thought through the whole thing, so far. Trying to knock off a year of rust. Or do you follow? Are you with me? Can I get an 'Amen'?
One is supposed to say 'Amen' after the monk finishes giving you his blessing after you make your offering.
He was in line over at 7-11, across the street from the train station where I got off from a fitfull overnight from Nhon Khai, just this side of the Mekong from Vientiane, you can check it on the map, fitfull because of the aching knee from the run, and from the freezing air-conditioned compartment.
Anyway, one can always use blessings, right? so I tried to catch him before he paid, and had an idea of getting him one of those pastries they like, and one of those yogurt drinks, since I never have rice unless I buy it, but here he came on out, and so I run over there and put fifty baht in his totally empty begging bowl. I don't know what he had under his sleeve from the 7-11, but he bought something. Anyway, I forgot the amen. And I also forgot the wai. That's how stupid I am.
I also, and I hate to admit this, but I also forgot to get exactly what I needed in Lao, the express purpose of my trip. You gotta SAY, 'multiple-entry', 'one-year'. there's rules. And you can't assume the paperwork's right.
New rules, I might add. Everything is tightening up. I see where you need a passport, a driver's license, a birth certificate, a urine sample and DNA evidence now just to...what was it? gain access into......
....your grocery account. You thought I was going to say, 'Canada', right?
Yeah. It's not just me being paranoid, which I accept, I am. The doctors agreed. They look up my ass every time. Department of Homeland Security. Not the doctors. I'm on their terrorist watch list, but you gotta go through a whole bunch of shit just to get your name off it, and it's not just the one-way ticket business. Every single time I board a flight or come home, it's the same shit, and as a red, white & black all-american purple heart vietnam vet, I take offense.
It ain't me you're lookin' for, babe.
_____
What Did You Just Say To Me?
There's this bird right outside the window here that keeps saying, 'For Real, For Real, For Real.'
and those frogs or lizards or whoever's saying it, down there on the pond by the bungalow in the jungalow - I can't even repeat what they're saying in English, because it's far too vulgar and explicit, and to the Thai, it's probably all lizard jibberish, but in English it's clear as a bell, and I was wondering, 'are they just saying that to me?'
No, not the 'fuck you' lizards. This was some rude shit. I know, I'm bad and profane at times, but there's just some shit you shouldn't say, either in print or in a comedy act, which has a LOT of latitude regarding 'crossing the line' of acceptable public prudence, even in a combat zone, where people can get their back up about body bags and such.
What the hell. They were saying...
....can't bring myself to say it. Although I've said some shameless things, and carried out some shameless acts, I've got to rein it in somefuckingwhere along the line of decency.
it was just too plain rude.
they're still out there. wait till the rainy season.
______
Fight to Die
Digger said he and Tilo were driving in one of the TVC (tsunami vol. ctr.) trucks one day, when he asked Tilo, 'You ever hit an animal in Thailand?'
Tilo said, 'No.'
No sooner were the words out of his mouth, Digger said, when a cat loped out in front of the truck, and, 'SPLAT!'
__
You try not to screech your tires on a motorbike, because everybody looks up and you feel like a fool. Thai dogs are notorious for laying in the road, and you always see some limping around on three legs, as traffic-wary as they appear to be.
Rolling through Khuk Khak village, a cat strolled out three paces into the street in front of me, not looking up, totally unconcerned of any traffic, and exuding the distinct impression that it had all nine of it's lives remaining, caused me to screech my tires. The people gathered there at the noodle stand all looked up, the cat, a calico, looked up in shock and flitted on across the street in advanced haste.
I gave it a scowl and asked it, like the Thai do the dogs lying in the road, 'You want fini? You want die?'
__
The dogs here often run in packs, and don't fight the way American dogs do. I've witnessed some horrific dog fights over here that have stopped traffic. They just don't stop. It goes on and on, and the sounds are vicious and satanic.
Sitting at a restaurant table with an American guest and P' Su, a dog fight broke out next door and continued to such an extent in front of the raised-floor that the policemen sitting at an adjacent table jumped up and began blowing their whistles, two Swedish couples grabbed their children and moved to the center of the restaurant, a man from the house next door ran out and stumbled over the small hedge, tumbling into the yard, Bill got up and went over to get a better look, and hundreds of stunned onlookers attending a large fair and concert event on the adjacent lot all took in the spectacle.
Neither dog would yield, and neither would yelp or whine as they went after each other so violently that they ignored the rocks, sticks, whistles, clapping, and shouts of anyone courageous enough to attempt an intervention, kind of like the UN and nations at war. The small black dog was defending the restaurant turf, and the big dog could go anywhere he wanted to, and the small black dog was saying, 'no you can't.'
When it fiiiiiiiinally ended, to the relief of everybody in the immediate vicinity, I said, 'In Amer-eegah, we no hab. Dog fi three may fi seconds...fini...no fi long ti.'
P' Su replied, 'In Thai LAND, dog fi to die. No brrrreak. Fi to die.'
__
Stepped across a cobra last week. Evidently not the spitting kind (King Cobra) that can blind you accurately at a dozen paces. This guy was little, about two feet long, deadlier then his mama, they say. And it looked just like any other snake, making his way behind the cooler, so I turned him around with a spongemop and he raised up and spread his fan out, and I thought, 'Oh SHIT! A cobra!' And before he went off the porch and under the deck, he raised up again and fanned out, just to make certain, and I thought, 'You're a fucking cobra, FOR SURE!'
That's why the glass house is up. Everything, up. Up.
And that's why the Thai build their houses on stilts, right? That, and air, and water during the rainy season. Makes perfect sense. Only since cement have they laid the flat slab houses. the Thai LOVE concrete. It's cool. It's cheap. Anyone can hab a hou.
_____
Thai TV
Showed up on Thai television after being called from the studio audience, 'COME ON UP!' on a game show, 'Name That Tune,' and although I'm familiar with a number of popular Thai radio tunes, I sure as hell didn't know their titles, but as senseless as it seemed, I went onstage, live.
The reigning champion had these tall-ass stacks of money in front of him and I was thinking there's no fucking way I'm gonna beat this guy, and as soon as we began the first round, they started the song and the guy immediately hit his buzzer.
'NAME THAT TUNE,' said the host, pointing at the champ. The Champ says some shit in Thai, and the host says, 'Yoooooouuuuuur're RIGHT!' and they give him more money.
Round two, same thing. The champ hit his buzzer as soon, and I mean, as soon as the first note came out, you know, like you can do with an oldie but goodie. They give him more money, and we go on to round three, and I'm thinking, 'I'm gonna beat that sonofabitch to the buzzer this time', so as soon as they dropped the needle on the record, I slapped my buzzer.
Everything stopped for a second. I beat the champ to the buzzer. The studio audience said, 'OHHHHHH?'
The host, stunned, said, 'OHHHHHH?'
The champ said, 'OHH?
After recovering his composure, the host spun and pointed his finger at me and said, 'NAME THAT TUNE!'
After a second's flustered hesitation, I spit out, 'Mai Khao Jai?' ('I don't understand').
'HHHRRRRRNNNNTTT' went an in-house buzzer. WRONG!
The host turned to the champ, pointing and saying, 'Name That Tune!' to which the champ responded accurately, and they gave him more money and the audience clapped and cheered.
After the commercial break, the host says, 'Although you didn't win any money today, we don't want you to leave empty-handed, so we're going to give youuuuuuuuu...ASETACHOPSTICKS!'
woke up in hysterics, something I haven't done in a long time.
end -
*'Welcome To The Nature' - On a huge outdoor sign at the entrance to a new housing development, south of Ayutthaya.
Protect The Nature - On the back of an eco-tourism jeep in Khao Lak.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
UP 2 U
UP 2 U
Khuk Khak, Thailand 2007 - The Suits, the stuffed shirts, the 'Big Boht' (Big Boss) from up in the front offices came down here talking about the need for a whole new way of thinking in the development of a product line, far beyond 'all these wire and bamboo shower caddies and coconut ashtrays.'
They said we were wayyyy the hell overstocked, and either needed a global marketing surge to unload our current inventory, or to start thinking 'outside the box' toward the creation of new products. "These shower caddies and bong plungers have just about played out," they said. "Think jewelry. Think 'his and hers'. Think toward the future," they said.
I don't know what they expected from me and a crew of outsourced help from Myanmar, working for 50 baht per day, and I couldn't feature a bamboo necklace, either. It seemed so big and clumsy. They were talking about the wire.
"Wire has unlimited potential. Wire and SEA SHELLS," they said. There's an ocean full of 'em! Whatever you come up with, it's up to you."
So there we were, walking the beaches of Khuk Khak and Bansak, looking for the full nautilus (as always), and seashells with a tiny hole for a .26 gauge wire, for bracelets; and two weeks later, we had a whole new inventory of abalone bracelets, his and hers coconut soap dishes, and a triple-decker shower caddy equivalent of a 17th century HMS frigate or Portuguese Man-O-War.
"THIS should impress Mr. Big Bought at the front office," I said to the Myanmar bamboo and coconut production crew, who all smiled and nodded their heads, since they don't speak any English and I can't talk Burmese, and we do most of our communicating in sign language.
They understand Baht. Thai baht.
At the premier showcasing of the new stuff, people looked at that triple-decker shower caddy and just shook their heads...like, 'maybe it's too much...lookit the work that went into it...and...but look how many they've got here. Maybe we should get one.'
Went like hotcakes. Sold out. All three hundred and forty-three, including a couple dozen, top-o-the-line Shower Caddy DLEs, Deluxe Edition. They had a big 'Shao-wah Cad-DY' party over at the 300-strong, corrugated tin and plywood Myanmar illegal immigrant camp, just around the corner from my house, between me and the Wat Komaneeyakhet across the lake, where all the monks hang out. The food was excellent.
Simple living in a 12x12 cubical space for a family of four or five. Everyone lives in long rows of low cubes, raised off the ground. Dogs and chickens running around. The women with their faces painted in powdered swirls. Babies and puppies in abundance. Each evening after work, the boys and men play takraw in the sand, performing incredible gymnastics and acrobatics, sending the ball back over the net with every part of their bodies but their hands.
A few of the cubes have television, but every family has a rice cooker and small florescent light, both run off a pirated, jerry-rigged splice off the main electrical line that nobody says anything about, except the cops that come through every once in awhile, checking for visas, when everyone scatters like chickens until they leave, which they won't do until somebody pays somebody some baht.
___
The recent 3-meter tidal surge from a 7.5 'afterchock' off the southern coast of Myanmar at first cleaned the beaches from Khao Lak to Cape Pakarang, then produced a plethora of new shells churned up from the undersea discombobulation, filling seaside resort kitchens with knee-deep sand, destroying others, and raising anew among the locals the certainty of another imminent tsunami, despite the assurances from all us foreigners that the likelihood of it occurring again wouldn't happen for another thousand years.
In their thinking, it's like, "It happened once. It can happen again.'
I'm not so certain they're not right. Down there on that beach, it's hard to not look out to sea every once in awhile, y' know, just checking. Checking for a line of froth.
But you'd know. You'd know ahead of time. You'd know by the water at first 'going away'. But I would be one of those doomed fools out there looking at the recently exposed seabed. And they say when the wave came, it was accompanied and preceded by a loud, ominous, creepy, moaning sound that had everyone at first looking up into the sky, wondering, before looking out to sea to see the water building and rushing at them.
Assured by geological science and statistical facts, nearly all of the investors, consortiums, and local resort owners have re-built and expanded their holdings all up and down 'The Strip' of commercial properties and businesses in the killing zone from Khao Lak to the Cape.
On the surface, particularly with the recovery of the vegetation, you'd never know anything happened here, except for that big police boat in Bang Niang, parked 2 kilometers inland, now a stark and silent national monument; and the Dresden-like ghost-shell of the former five-star Sofitel resort in Khuk Khak, on the beach right down the road from me, where they can't seem to keep night shift security guards because of the 600 ghosts of the Sofitel, still laughing and partying at night in the ruins, lost souls, they say, laughing and talking in German, Swedish, and English.
One of the older Thai guards said it didn't bother him so much, as long as they kept it down.
It's a beautiful beach. The loveliest in the area. The Thai people don't go there much. "Thai people no like Khuk Khak beach," they say.
So who can call it superstition? I had to ask what it was for, to the Thai lady who had spread out a huge meal on the sand, along with candles, incense, sweets, and bottled water. I had gone way down the beach, and when I returned, she was still there.
She had been beachcombing the previous day, and that night in her sleep had been bothered by a man, a 'farang', a foreigner in nothing but a swimsuit, waking her, shaking her, she said, asking for something to eat, asking for food, then evaporating.
She had selected a spot high up on the sand, up near the vegetation where high tide would take it all away...and laid it all out, kneeling, bowing, her forehead on the sand, praying up there, for a long, long time.
___
Four More Chalk Outlines
"I'm not a real doctor...I mean, I never finished medical school, and I practice without a license...out-patient service, first response," I said to the Thai man who announced that he was an EMT trainee as he placed a rolled up towel under the neck of the woman from Amsterdam who lay in the street after being broadsided on her honda by a speeding tour van, right outside Nang Thong market where hundreds of mostly German and Swedish tourists gather at night and spill out dangerously into the street, now gathered in a gawking circle.
"But I don't suppose she cares, does she?"
No concussion. Fractured femur. Maybe a fractured pelvis. Cuts and abrasions. Definitely a trip to Takuapa hospital. Definitely an end to the holiday for her and her three comforting friends, who spoke English.
"Ask her if her head hurts."
Fortunately, not. Headed out of Khao Lak on my motorbike, I had heard the screech of tires just behind me, and then the impact, and what the hell, it's like being an English teacher, you just can't help yourself, and as a medic, you've gotta stop.
The lady from Amsterdam was the first of eight patients treated by Brovic's Emergency Roadside Outpatient Medical Service, operational from Khao Lak to Takuapa aboard a 125 cc. honda. Nothing to do for the Myanmar lady but put a sheet over her head and wait for the cops and an ambulance after she stepped backward from her six-person weed-cutting crew onto the highway into the path of a songtau up by Bansak beach, so she didn't count as a patient. She only counted as somebody's wife and mother before going out to work that morning for fifty baht per day, her third-world wage.
The funniest mishap was the two girls from Germany, riding double, waiting on the side of the road, who I passed and then saw shoot directly across the road, over the embankment, and off into the vegetation.
They were more embarrassed than hurt. The girl who was driving kept asking about the bike.
"The bike's okay," I told her. "How long have you had it?"
"We just got it this morning," she said. "A couple of hours ago."
For cleaning wounds, I've got alcohol, which stings, and hydrogen peroxide, which does not. Guess which one I used on those girls.
With it's 'anything goes' attitude toward rules of the road, Thailand has the highest traffic fatality rate in S.E. Asia. When you think, 'Baby Seat', you visualize what?...a bluish-gray plastic, padded, belted, corduroy affair for baby in the backseat, right? Over here, it's a wicker seat, custom-made to fit over the frame of a motorbike, secured by momma's knees.
____
Get Your Act Together
In response to people wondering when I was going to get my act together, I arranged to meet with Paul, a heavy-drinking ex-pat Brit, and a prospective member of the comedy troupe, at the beer garden on the fountain circle in Vientiane, Laos.
He showed up with another guy, a retired high school principal from Wisconsin who was involved with some northern hill tribes, I forget doing exactly what...some kinda puppet show or something...with full-sized paper mache', cardboard, and tin foil spacesuits to encourage the hilltribe kids to become astronauts. I never quite made a clear-channel connection on his mission. It was noisy, and I only caught fragments.
"How's it going?" I asked as they approached the table.
"Still got 'em all," Paul laughed, twirling his hands in the air, showing me he still had all his fingers after twenty years of UXO bomb disposal work along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and Cambodia, a rather incongruent occupation for a comic, it would seem.
Besides P' Kao, who could fill a good ten minutes with his terrific Superman in Thailand act, we still needed three more members to fill an hour show in our playbill for the Bob Hope Memorial Uninterrupted Hilarity Comedy Tour through Baghdad, Mosul and two other Iraqi venues, and two additional stops in Afghanistan, having already secured a tentative booking through our BHMUHCT agent and the U.S. DOD Dept. of Special Services Asia representative.
"Why the fuck would I want to go into a combat zone?" asked Paul as he ordered up a pitcher. "They like to capture and behead Brits and Americans in that part of the world."
An entirely legitimate question, forgoing the obvious rationale of 'Country' (he wouldn't care; he was an ex-pat), 'Our people in uniform', 'Bob Hope' (reason enough, in and of itself, to a comic), and 'expiation or deliverance of sin' (at which he laughed uproariously. Paul once joked that he had planted much of the ordnance that he was now removing).
Through the first three pitchers and chain-smoking Pall Malls, he kept saying, "I prefer my head just where it is, thank you. On my neck. Attached to my body."
Four pitchers later, after talk of a resurrected comedy career and an extended dispute with the Thai interpreter/guide about the historic nature of the Emerald Buddha at Bangkok's Wat Phra Kaew, which the Lao waiter, who was majoring in physics at Vientiane University, bitterly assured us had been stolen from Laos in the 18th century, Paul said he'd go.
He had a great bag of bomb jokes tailor-made for a military audience, and could easily fill ten or fifteen minutes of stage time. We'd need only one more member. By the end of the evening, it was looking like a green light launch, all the way. All we needed was to get a for-sure booking nailed down before the troop pullout, Iraqi government stability, or the 2008 elections, whichever came first.
For my wrap-up segment, I had twelve minutes of re-worked but possibly incendiary uncensored Thunderclap 2.0 Poor Sap-in-Uniform material, including Jesse Jackson in Sherwood Forest, Bin Laden on 'Good Morning, America', and homeboy body bag jokes that were sure to get 'em on their feet. Should be fun. We've just got to get to them before they come home or declare it over.
We encountered a slight problem/delay at the Lao/Thai border crossing on the way back, with those two German Shepherds going bananas when I went through, no doubt going bananas over that pungent Lao tobacco that I had purchased the night before and had just finished smoking in the back of the cyclo-taxi.
It's always best to keep in mind those guys (Lao) are still Communists, and intolerant of any monkey business, clearly lacking any sense of humor, and particularly sensitive to any references to the Emerald Buddha.*
"Why dogs go bananas for you?" asked the border guard.
"I don't know," I replied. "The metric system?"
"You say here, 'Comic', on 'profession'?" asked the border guard, looking critically at my passport. "Okay, funny man. Make me raff."
____
* turns out, there's still dispute, even among scholars. Some say the source was India, 45 B.C., with transit through Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Ankor Wat, and Ayutthaya. From there, up to Chiang Mai and over to Luang Prabang. Then there was some sort of hazy, legendary mix-up involving elephants, but there seems to be little argument that one of the warrior kings, King Whatchamacallit, Rama I to-be, went up there and sacked Vientiane about the time of the American Revolution, 1779, snagged the Emerald Buddha, and took it back home with him.
It's actually made of jade.
___
Dr.'s Orders
Although people may question a doctor's diagnosis and seek a second opinion, nobody seems to question the doctor's orders. It occurred to me that it's a perfectly lame but acceptable excuse to toss up to practically any 'why?' question.
"Why did you do that?"
"Doctor's orders."
So, you really don't have to be a doctor if you just act like a doctor. In all my years of practicing medicine without a license, I've never once had someone question my legitimacy or authority. What they always say, is, "Yes, Doctor."
end
Khuk Khak, Thailand 2007 - The Suits, the stuffed shirts, the 'Big Boht' (Big Boss) from up in the front offices came down here talking about the need for a whole new way of thinking in the development of a product line, far beyond 'all these wire and bamboo shower caddies and coconut ashtrays.'
They said we were wayyyy the hell overstocked, and either needed a global marketing surge to unload our current inventory, or to start thinking 'outside the box' toward the creation of new products. "These shower caddies and bong plungers have just about played out," they said. "Think jewelry. Think 'his and hers'. Think toward the future," they said.
I don't know what they expected from me and a crew of outsourced help from Myanmar, working for 50 baht per day, and I couldn't feature a bamboo necklace, either. It seemed so big and clumsy. They were talking about the wire.
"Wire has unlimited potential. Wire and SEA SHELLS," they said. There's an ocean full of 'em! Whatever you come up with, it's up to you."
So there we were, walking the beaches of Khuk Khak and Bansak, looking for the full nautilus (as always), and seashells with a tiny hole for a .26 gauge wire, for bracelets; and two weeks later, we had a whole new inventory of abalone bracelets, his and hers coconut soap dishes, and a triple-decker shower caddy equivalent of a 17th century HMS frigate or Portuguese Man-O-War.
"THIS should impress Mr. Big Bought at the front office," I said to the Myanmar bamboo and coconut production crew, who all smiled and nodded their heads, since they don't speak any English and I can't talk Burmese, and we do most of our communicating in sign language.
They understand Baht. Thai baht.
At the premier showcasing of the new stuff, people looked at that triple-decker shower caddy and just shook their heads...like, 'maybe it's too much...lookit the work that went into it...and...but look how many they've got here. Maybe we should get one.'
Went like hotcakes. Sold out. All three hundred and forty-three, including a couple dozen, top-o-the-line Shower Caddy DLEs, Deluxe Edition. They had a big 'Shao-wah Cad-DY' party over at the 300-strong, corrugated tin and plywood Myanmar illegal immigrant camp, just around the corner from my house, between me and the Wat Komaneeyakhet across the lake, where all the monks hang out. The food was excellent.
Simple living in a 12x12 cubical space for a family of four or five. Everyone lives in long rows of low cubes, raised off the ground. Dogs and chickens running around. The women with their faces painted in powdered swirls. Babies and puppies in abundance. Each evening after work, the boys and men play takraw in the sand, performing incredible gymnastics and acrobatics, sending the ball back over the net with every part of their bodies but their hands.
A few of the cubes have television, but every family has a rice cooker and small florescent light, both run off a pirated, jerry-rigged splice off the main electrical line that nobody says anything about, except the cops that come through every once in awhile, checking for visas, when everyone scatters like chickens until they leave, which they won't do until somebody pays somebody some baht.
___
The recent 3-meter tidal surge from a 7.5 'afterchock' off the southern coast of Myanmar at first cleaned the beaches from Khao Lak to Cape Pakarang, then produced a plethora of new shells churned up from the undersea discombobulation, filling seaside resort kitchens with knee-deep sand, destroying others, and raising anew among the locals the certainty of another imminent tsunami, despite the assurances from all us foreigners that the likelihood of it occurring again wouldn't happen for another thousand years.
In their thinking, it's like, "It happened once. It can happen again.'
I'm not so certain they're not right. Down there on that beach, it's hard to not look out to sea every once in awhile, y' know, just checking. Checking for a line of froth.
But you'd know. You'd know ahead of time. You'd know by the water at first 'going away'. But I would be one of those doomed fools out there looking at the recently exposed seabed. And they say when the wave came, it was accompanied and preceded by a loud, ominous, creepy, moaning sound that had everyone at first looking up into the sky, wondering, before looking out to sea to see the water building and rushing at them.
Assured by geological science and statistical facts, nearly all of the investors, consortiums, and local resort owners have re-built and expanded their holdings all up and down 'The Strip' of commercial properties and businesses in the killing zone from Khao Lak to the Cape.
On the surface, particularly with the recovery of the vegetation, you'd never know anything happened here, except for that big police boat in Bang Niang, parked 2 kilometers inland, now a stark and silent national monument; and the Dresden-like ghost-shell of the former five-star Sofitel resort in Khuk Khak, on the beach right down the road from me, where they can't seem to keep night shift security guards because of the 600 ghosts of the Sofitel, still laughing and partying at night in the ruins, lost souls, they say, laughing and talking in German, Swedish, and English.
One of the older Thai guards said it didn't bother him so much, as long as they kept it down.
It's a beautiful beach. The loveliest in the area. The Thai people don't go there much. "Thai people no like Khuk Khak beach," they say.
So who can call it superstition? I had to ask what it was for, to the Thai lady who had spread out a huge meal on the sand, along with candles, incense, sweets, and bottled water. I had gone way down the beach, and when I returned, she was still there.
She had been beachcombing the previous day, and that night in her sleep had been bothered by a man, a 'farang', a foreigner in nothing but a swimsuit, waking her, shaking her, she said, asking for something to eat, asking for food, then evaporating.
She had selected a spot high up on the sand, up near the vegetation where high tide would take it all away...and laid it all out, kneeling, bowing, her forehead on the sand, praying up there, for a long, long time.
___
Four More Chalk Outlines
"I'm not a real doctor...I mean, I never finished medical school, and I practice without a license...out-patient service, first response," I said to the Thai man who announced that he was an EMT trainee as he placed a rolled up towel under the neck of the woman from Amsterdam who lay in the street after being broadsided on her honda by a speeding tour van, right outside Nang Thong market where hundreds of mostly German and Swedish tourists gather at night and spill out dangerously into the street, now gathered in a gawking circle.
"But I don't suppose she cares, does she?"
No concussion. Fractured femur. Maybe a fractured pelvis. Cuts and abrasions. Definitely a trip to Takuapa hospital. Definitely an end to the holiday for her and her three comforting friends, who spoke English.
"Ask her if her head hurts."
Fortunately, not. Headed out of Khao Lak on my motorbike, I had heard the screech of tires just behind me, and then the impact, and what the hell, it's like being an English teacher, you just can't help yourself, and as a medic, you've gotta stop.
The lady from Amsterdam was the first of eight patients treated by Brovic's Emergency Roadside Outpatient Medical Service, operational from Khao Lak to Takuapa aboard a 125 cc. honda. Nothing to do for the Myanmar lady but put a sheet over her head and wait for the cops and an ambulance after she stepped backward from her six-person weed-cutting crew onto the highway into the path of a songtau up by Bansak beach, so she didn't count as a patient. She only counted as somebody's wife and mother before going out to work that morning for fifty baht per day, her third-world wage.
The funniest mishap was the two girls from Germany, riding double, waiting on the side of the road, who I passed and then saw shoot directly across the road, over the embankment, and off into the vegetation.
They were more embarrassed than hurt. The girl who was driving kept asking about the bike.
"The bike's okay," I told her. "How long have you had it?"
"We just got it this morning," she said. "A couple of hours ago."
For cleaning wounds, I've got alcohol, which stings, and hydrogen peroxide, which does not. Guess which one I used on those girls.
With it's 'anything goes' attitude toward rules of the road, Thailand has the highest traffic fatality rate in S.E. Asia. When you think, 'Baby Seat', you visualize what?...a bluish-gray plastic, padded, belted, corduroy affair for baby in the backseat, right? Over here, it's a wicker seat, custom-made to fit over the frame of a motorbike, secured by momma's knees.
____
Get Your Act Together
In response to people wondering when I was going to get my act together, I arranged to meet with Paul, a heavy-drinking ex-pat Brit, and a prospective member of the comedy troupe, at the beer garden on the fountain circle in Vientiane, Laos.
He showed up with another guy, a retired high school principal from Wisconsin who was involved with some northern hill tribes, I forget doing exactly what...some kinda puppet show or something...with full-sized paper mache', cardboard, and tin foil spacesuits to encourage the hilltribe kids to become astronauts. I never quite made a clear-channel connection on his mission. It was noisy, and I only caught fragments.
"How's it going?" I asked as they approached the table.
"Still got 'em all," Paul laughed, twirling his hands in the air, showing me he still had all his fingers after twenty years of UXO bomb disposal work along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and Cambodia, a rather incongruent occupation for a comic, it would seem.
Besides P' Kao, who could fill a good ten minutes with his terrific Superman in Thailand act, we still needed three more members to fill an hour show in our playbill for the Bob Hope Memorial Uninterrupted Hilarity Comedy Tour through Baghdad, Mosul and two other Iraqi venues, and two additional stops in Afghanistan, having already secured a tentative booking through our BHMUHCT agent and the U.S. DOD Dept. of Special Services Asia representative.
"Why the fuck would I want to go into a combat zone?" asked Paul as he ordered up a pitcher. "They like to capture and behead Brits and Americans in that part of the world."
An entirely legitimate question, forgoing the obvious rationale of 'Country' (he wouldn't care; he was an ex-pat), 'Our people in uniform', 'Bob Hope' (reason enough, in and of itself, to a comic), and 'expiation or deliverance of sin' (at which he laughed uproariously. Paul once joked that he had planted much of the ordnance that he was now removing).
Through the first three pitchers and chain-smoking Pall Malls, he kept saying, "I prefer my head just where it is, thank you. On my neck. Attached to my body."
Four pitchers later, after talk of a resurrected comedy career and an extended dispute with the Thai interpreter/guide about the historic nature of the Emerald Buddha at Bangkok's Wat Phra Kaew, which the Lao waiter, who was majoring in physics at Vientiane University, bitterly assured us had been stolen from Laos in the 18th century, Paul said he'd go.
He had a great bag of bomb jokes tailor-made for a military audience, and could easily fill ten or fifteen minutes of stage time. We'd need only one more member. By the end of the evening, it was looking like a green light launch, all the way. All we needed was to get a for-sure booking nailed down before the troop pullout, Iraqi government stability, or the 2008 elections, whichever came first.
For my wrap-up segment, I had twelve minutes of re-worked but possibly incendiary uncensored Thunderclap 2.0 Poor Sap-in-Uniform material, including Jesse Jackson in Sherwood Forest, Bin Laden on 'Good Morning, America', and homeboy body bag jokes that were sure to get 'em on their feet. Should be fun. We've just got to get to them before they come home or declare it over.
We encountered a slight problem/delay at the Lao/Thai border crossing on the way back, with those two German Shepherds going bananas when I went through, no doubt going bananas over that pungent Lao tobacco that I had purchased the night before and had just finished smoking in the back of the cyclo-taxi.
It's always best to keep in mind those guys (Lao) are still Communists, and intolerant of any monkey business, clearly lacking any sense of humor, and particularly sensitive to any references to the Emerald Buddha.*
"Why dogs go bananas for you?" asked the border guard.
"I don't know," I replied. "The metric system?"
"You say here, 'Comic', on 'profession'?" asked the border guard, looking critically at my passport. "Okay, funny man. Make me raff."
____
* turns out, there's still dispute, even among scholars. Some say the source was India, 45 B.C., with transit through Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Ankor Wat, and Ayutthaya. From there, up to Chiang Mai and over to Luang Prabang. Then there was some sort of hazy, legendary mix-up involving elephants, but there seems to be little argument that one of the warrior kings, King Whatchamacallit, Rama I to-be, went up there and sacked Vientiane about the time of the American Revolution, 1779, snagged the Emerald Buddha, and took it back home with him.
It's actually made of jade.
___
Dr.'s Orders
Although people may question a doctor's diagnosis and seek a second opinion, nobody seems to question the doctor's orders. It occurred to me that it's a perfectly lame but acceptable excuse to toss up to practically any 'why?' question.
"Why did you do that?"
"Doctor's orders."
So, you really don't have to be a doctor if you just act like a doctor. In all my years of practicing medicine without a license, I've never once had someone question my legitimacy or authority. What they always say, is, "Yes, Doctor."
end
Friday, December 01, 2006
Sleigh Ride Down Main Street
Sunglow, AZ - No sleigh ride of fantasy here. No literary escape into neverland. No shortcut between dream and waking state. We couldn't wish it away, like my daughter in her childhood make-believe world would say, 'Magical, magical,' turning an invisible key. 'Poof!' It's real. 'Lock 'em in the Caser.'
And suddenly here they came down the small town Main Street, lined with flag-waving tight-knit locals, balloons, young mothers pushing baby strollers, older folks toting folding chairs.
First came a half dozen WWII vets, decrepid shrunken attic relics in their musty antiquated dress uniforms, rows of medals suspended from their left breasts, trudging along in lockstep, chins forward, rifles at the ready, serving as the honor guard, hoisting the flag and their unit colors.
They were the remnants of Omaha and Normandy, the liberators of France, all but forgotten, entrenched in their daily routine of gathering each morning at Ted's coffee shop, swapping tales and lies the way old men do, but never returning to their war.
The old warriors stopped before the reviewing stand, turned smartly on a barely audible command, and flashed a proud sharp salute to the mayor and dignitaries on the flatbed truck that served as a makeshift stage for the day, decorated with red, white and blue banners.
They placed the Stars and Stripes at the review stand, and on command, hoisted their rifles skyward and fired off a volley that echoed off the downtown buildings and windows, sending a jolt through the crowd and a flock a pidgeons from their roosts.
The old boys then shouldered their weapons, turned left-face, and marched on down the street, satisfied in their capability of once again having completed their mission.
They were followed by the vets of Korea, a decade younger bunch with a slightly livelier step, American flags on their lapels, their pins and decorations on their caps. They were gray and wrinkled and crippled and mostly alcoholic, in their late 60s and 70s, wearing blue American Legion Post windbreakers and marching in practiced unison in a proud solid block of two dozen men.
Then came the vets of Vietnam, almost comically out of step, some of whom had shaved for the occasion. Most were wearing faded jungle fatigues, dog tags and frayed jackets with subdued name, rank, and insignia. Many were bearded, prematurely aged hollow-eyed zombies who'd experienced homelessness under bridges and cardboard box shelters, stood on street corners of nameless cities with shoppping carts and scrawled magic marker signs proclaiming their dysfunctional state and need, resigned to a remaining desolate lifetime of medication.
Behind them came the younger vets of Gulf War I, the war of Bush the Elder, no senator's son among them. There weren't as many of them, wearing clean and pressed khaki uniforms and looking proud and almost normal.
Although several of them were currently engaged in locked battle with the VA, they had made a commendable near-adjustment back into society, and the crowd showed their appreciation by applauding politely as they passed by in disciplined ranks; their leader, in a hushed ball of breath, ordered, 'Eyesss RIGHT. Haaaand SALUTE.'
Bringing up the rear were the vets of Afghanistan and Iraq, indistinctively lumped together and blurred, reflecting the nature and rationale of those conflicts. Unlike the other groups of soldiers, there were several women in the ranks, wearing boots and desert uniforms.
And there was Sheila. Just a few years earlier, she had been in the parade route as a court member of the homecoming queen, riding atop a pink convertible in a pink dress, smiling, waving at the crowd.
She got married right out of high school, had two kids, and had been working second shift at the mini-mart, joined the national guard with her husband, mostly for the educational benefits, planning to take classes at the regional campus when the kids got older, maybe major in criminal justice, maybe become a legal secretary or something, she said. Her husband never returned home after his second compulsory tour, still listed as MIA.
Now here she came down the street in a wheelchair pushed by a fellow soldier, the aluminum and steel rod legs protruding from her uniform. The crowd waved tiny American flags. A child's ice cream dropped onto it's lap, the mother inattentive, her worried eyes riveted on the woman warrior. How would Sheila raise those two children, she wondered, without real hands, and from a wheelchair.
Two sets of grandparents stood at the curb, holding Sheila's toddlers, the crowd nearby stealing sympathetic glances at them as Sheila rolled by. 'There's Mommy!' cried out the older of her two children, pointing.
Sheila's face was disfigured as well, mouth and cheekbone misshappened and scarred from a horrific blast that sent her and her humvee into a spin, and the other occupants to the hereafter.
The crowd applauded as she passed by, just as they had for her as the pretty homecoming queen runner-up, and then grew deathly silent when they stopped her before the reviewing stand, Sheila rising shakily from her chair on new computerized prosthetic legs, lifting a steel claw to salute.
They had all watched her grow up in that small town. The mayor and those on the flatbed truck cried as they returned her dignified salute, ashamed they had passively let it happen, without a protest, without a whimper.
Magical magical. Turn the invisible key. Undo it all. Poof! Lock it all up in the Caser.
- end
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Homecoming For Hernando
LYONS, CO - When he returned home from Baghdad, he was amazed and appalled at how everything had changed in such a short time. Behind their caring, no one seemed aware. Everyone seemed accustomed to the bustle, oblivion, and fog of their everyday lives.
Went searching for familiar connections through old friends and history teachers, their lives sanitized, insulated and encapsulated cocoons of apathy. The sky had long since fallen on ground zero, the ashes run to storm sewer then out to hostile sea; the line blurred and fragmented between friend and foe; paved streets of greed, graft, and gratuitous corruption in the city of righteous lights.
No sign or recognition behind those masks. Alone and isolated in volcanic percolation, worn of despised trepidation and fictitious smiles. They were a busy people, a galaxy away from the sorrow they'd sown, a tragedy spawned, his confused role of tormented incarnate evil wrestled into a corner, stuffed into a crevice, convinced it was good.
Try to penetrate the mummified warrior's world, his unfortunate survivor's sheath of anesthetized guilt. No light nor hope in those distant hollow eyes of abbreviated and aborted dreams. Their phrases awkward and inane, their praise muffled and incoherent, their laughter hideous and repugnant, their joy obscene.
They had attended his convoluted drama on scalped tickets, dismissing their compromised values with incongruencies, faulty logic and repressed truth. They had reconciled his steely stare and cold, shiny, automated metallic claws for hands.
They grew accustomed to the cool chrome wheels guiding him down the parade route and 50-yard line at halftime. They cheered, whistled, and waved as he sat in an embarrassed and cheated lava lump of humiliated despair, knowing what he represented, and in the end, they didn't want to be reminded. They didn't want him around at all.
- end
Friday, November 17, 2006
Bad Week For Dogs
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SD - Looked like a fairly good week for humans this week, but a bad week for dogs. Don't really know why.
Lupe' and I took the long way to Pine Ridge, up to Oglala first to the PO where there was need to notify the postmaster of an expected prolonged absence; a box from our Sun Dance cook in Indiana containing coffee, tobacco, a tape recorder and a couple of tapes, letting me know she was serious; and a terrifying letter from a government agency aprising me and 1.2 million other could-be victims of identity theft that their data base had been compromised.
After ripping the letter open and scanning the content in a palpitating flash, I breathed a sigh of relief, picked up the box and turned to Lupe'.
"I know what's in here! Rachelle sent us cookies! You got a blade?"
No cookies. We gassed up, ten bucks worth, "Four and a half gallons," Lupe' shouted, over at Cubby's, where the young cashier was pregnant with her third child; she already had a little girl and boy, she said, and I told her she was lucky, got a newspaper, a bag of spicy Doritos, a couple of juices and headed into Pine Ridge village.
Didn't think much other than to notice that black and white dog on it's back, stiff legged, laying off to the side. On down the road a hundred yards lay another, a yellow dog, further down in the ditch. Shit. 'How can a dog live that long...a full-grown adult...and not know...'.
We drove on in silence, Lupe' checking the gas again and again, devouring the Doritos. As we neared Calico, there was another road-kill dog. Said to Lupe', "You noticing all these dogs on the side of the road?"
"Yeah," he replied, backing off the accelerator, holding the speed down to about 45, checking the gas gauge.
"JESUS! There's another!" I said as we passed a small, wirey-haired dog.
Another hundred yards down the road was another. "Man. What's going on with the dogs?" I asked Lupe'. How many is that? Five? Six?"
Up by Red Cloud school there were two more, and as we came over the hill up by the hospital and down into Pine Ridge, there was another. Was it just that stretch of road? Highway 18?
We gassed up at Big Bats, another ten bucks for what Nita calls 'a real Gus Gazzler', went over to Sioux Nation for chili fixins for after lodge and ran into Uncle Joe over there, saying his brother Scottie fell out during peyote ceremony with a heart attack and they had to carry him out of there and give him angioplasty.
Ran into Misty and Olowan outside, saying she was too scared to go inside, just then, and Loren Black Elk in the parking lot, and another guy who only asked for thirty-five cents.
We headed out. Out past the tribal building where everything is currently in an uproar, limbo, hiatus, conflicted, antagonistic, conspiratorial and confused over the recent general elections that weren't supposed to happen, the sitting council, the sitting president, seized ballot boxes, who and who wasn't supposed to be on the ballot, the election board, and the board of election appeals. And the secretary.
Out past the rodeo grounds on our way home, there was another dog laying in the ditch. After that one, we didn't see no more.
___
It's quiet here now. Was for awhile. Tom B. is in town with the tribal council. "Everything's going to be okay," he said here last night before we went into lodge. "Everything is going to work out for the best of the people."
Went into lodge with thirteen last night. Nephew Adam was there, over from Casper, Wyoming where he'd been beaten up and had his nose broken by a group of white boys. It was cold last night. Tom B. loaded his pipe and prayed for council. Bo and Misty fed everyone afterward. Chili. Everyone's fixing chili these days.
No sign of Lupe'. His son just came in, looking for him. He got jumped out by Cheyenne Creek last week and ended up in the hospital emergency room with thirteen stitches. Sat here, telling the story, gingerly patting his head.
- end
Lupe' and I took the long way to Pine Ridge, up to Oglala first to the PO where there was need to notify the postmaster of an expected prolonged absence; a box from our Sun Dance cook in Indiana containing coffee, tobacco, a tape recorder and a couple of tapes, letting me know she was serious; and a terrifying letter from a government agency aprising me and 1.2 million other could-be victims of identity theft that their data base had been compromised.
After ripping the letter open and scanning the content in a palpitating flash, I breathed a sigh of relief, picked up the box and turned to Lupe'.
"I know what's in here! Rachelle sent us cookies! You got a blade?"
No cookies. We gassed up, ten bucks worth, "Four and a half gallons," Lupe' shouted, over at Cubby's, where the young cashier was pregnant with her third child; she already had a little girl and boy, she said, and I told her she was lucky, got a newspaper, a bag of spicy Doritos, a couple of juices and headed into Pine Ridge village.
Didn't think much other than to notice that black and white dog on it's back, stiff legged, laying off to the side. On down the road a hundred yards lay another, a yellow dog, further down in the ditch. Shit. 'How can a dog live that long...a full-grown adult...and not know...'.
We drove on in silence, Lupe' checking the gas again and again, devouring the Doritos. As we neared Calico, there was another road-kill dog. Said to Lupe', "You noticing all these dogs on the side of the road?"
"Yeah," he replied, backing off the accelerator, holding the speed down to about 45, checking the gas gauge.
"JESUS! There's another!" I said as we passed a small, wirey-haired dog.
Another hundred yards down the road was another. "Man. What's going on with the dogs?" I asked Lupe'. How many is that? Five? Six?"
Up by Red Cloud school there were two more, and as we came over the hill up by the hospital and down into Pine Ridge, there was another. Was it just that stretch of road? Highway 18?
We gassed up at Big Bats, another ten bucks for what Nita calls 'a real Gus Gazzler', went over to Sioux Nation for chili fixins for after lodge and ran into Uncle Joe over there, saying his brother Scottie fell out during peyote ceremony with a heart attack and they had to carry him out of there and give him angioplasty.
Ran into Misty and Olowan outside, saying she was too scared to go inside, just then, and Loren Black Elk in the parking lot, and another guy who only asked for thirty-five cents.
We headed out. Out past the tribal building where everything is currently in an uproar, limbo, hiatus, conflicted, antagonistic, conspiratorial and confused over the recent general elections that weren't supposed to happen, the sitting council, the sitting president, seized ballot boxes, who and who wasn't supposed to be on the ballot, the election board, and the board of election appeals. And the secretary.
Out past the rodeo grounds on our way home, there was another dog laying in the ditch. After that one, we didn't see no more.
___
It's quiet here now. Was for awhile. Tom B. is in town with the tribal council. "Everything's going to be okay," he said here last night before we went into lodge. "Everything is going to work out for the best of the people."
Went into lodge with thirteen last night. Nephew Adam was there, over from Casper, Wyoming where he'd been beaten up and had his nose broken by a group of white boys. It was cold last night. Tom B. loaded his pipe and prayed for council. Bo and Misty fed everyone afterward. Chili. Everyone's fixing chili these days.
No sign of Lupe'. His son just came in, looking for him. He got jumped out by Cheyenne Creek last week and ended up in the hospital emergency room with thirteen stitches. Sat here, telling the story, gingerly patting his head.
- end
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Chop Wood, Carry Water
PINE RIDGE Indian Reservation - Someday when I'm famous, you'll say to people, "Awwww, that guy used to send me his stuff allllll da time."
You can tell how importantly people regard your email messages by how quickly they respond, or if they blow you off completely. Sent directly to 'trash'. The electronic compost pile. Turn it back to worms. Maybe later it can sustain an intelligent life form.
On a diminishing scale from 'urgent', to 'delete', where do you suppose your communiques fall?
I joined up to 'MySpace', and after a month, checked it out. Brovic has ZERO messages, ZERO voice mails, and ZERO friends. Great. Made my day. I'm envious of Kim.
Kim has 13,186 friends.
No respect. Didn't just happen recently. I came off the bench in a home basketball game in which the score was tied. My job was to pass the ball inbounds. Somebody else would take the shot. If I couldn't get the ball into the back court, I was to hit Bruce on the sideline, in the corner. He'd be there.
Okay, so the defender was all over the inbounds pass, right?...jumping up and down and waving his arms around, so I faked the ball to the back court and heaved it with all my might, down the sideline to Bruce, except that other guy stuck his head in the way and took it flush in the face from about five feet away.
SMACKO!
The crowd gasped, then laughed, then went, "Ooooooooh."
They had to call an official's time-out to check the kid out, all hunched over and holding his face, from which arose a hot circular reddening mass of welts from the raised pimples of basketball's surface, with the unforgettable NOSLIW etched into his face, his coach and the whole team, their fans, and even the officials glaring at me.
I was glad we were playing at home. I forget the score or who won.
Then once at the collegiate level, when we played St. Joseph's, who kicked our asses, the team bus left without me, and the janitor put me out of the building, where I sat on the stone steps until Coach came back in his car and got me, some four hours later.
And in baseball I set the school pitching record for Most-Runs-Scored-Against-In-A-Single-Inning, when the opposition, a team from Huntington, scored 17 runs in the first inning, and the coach just left me in there. After about nine runs I went over to the duguout and asked the coach to take me out. He said, "Hang in there. We'll get the other two outs."
It wasn't all my fault. There were a few fielding errors as well. We sucked.
By my senior year, they HAD to give me something, some kind of award, so they did, but it wasn't performance-based. I forget what it was. Somewhere in the bottom of a cardboard box that ended up among yard sale leftovers. Something like, 'Coaches Award'.
Why am I telling you this?
___
A history of comedy, I suppose. Even in the classroom, first as a clown, and later as a professor. Even the journalism was comedic, there toward the end, although it wasn't me who took off the micro-wave transmitter antenna from the mobile unit when it passed under the St. Mary's St. bridge. That was Charles.
And so, there was this comedy/tragedy thing going, a consistent modulating thread of trauma and carefree gaeity, horror to hilarity, a house of mirrors reflecting scars and laughter, and Bo sat here, oblivious to all the conversation going on around him, looked up blankly from the crossword puzzle at a spot on the wall, saying to no one, "I don't know shit about Shakespeare," then turned back down to the puzzle.
Every class needs a clown, and every ward needs a medic. Sometimes it's the same person. It could be in a helicopter, or maybe among amputees at Walter Reed Army Medical hospital. Maybe they'll laugh, if only for a little while.
____
"Outlaws!" Manuel shouted out into space as he stood inside the door, as if they were riding up on horses.
He got my attention up from the keyboard. "What's that?" I asked.
"Prisoners of war. Concentration camp 344," he said without looking over, still talking to that space in the distance upon which he always seems to be focused.
"Concentration camp 344? Where's that?" I asked.
"You're sittin' on it." he replied.
Manuel, who had ancestors die at Wounded Knee, and says he received his education in downtown Denver, skid row, is a fixture in the neighborhood and does some mechanical work. He'll typically enter and stand just inside the door like a Sergeant-At-Arms until someone says, "Sit down, Manuel. You're making me nervous."
Like a man who spends time alone and thirsts for listening company, in the span of fifteen minutes, Manuel covered history, philosophy, tribal government, the truck he's got to fix, a description of its transmission, the water lines to his house, and his ailments.
He was excited about rural water finally connecting him to the water line after five years of paperwork and waiting.
"I'm the first one in my family to get running water," he said. "Out of all the generations."
Manuel has an appreciation for water. He had a reason to be happy.
When living without running water or electricity, burning candles and carrying water jugs, one can gain an enormous gratitude for water. Chopping wood and carrying water. Hot water pot on the wood stove and simplistic living.
After sweat lodge purification ceremony a couple of weeks ago when there was but four of us who went in, there was still water left in the bottom of the bucket, and later I bottled it in a thermos and shared it around the next day, remembering what Kurt Fool Bull, from over on Rosebud (Cicangu Reservation, next door), had said one morning after a peyote ceremony when he noticed there was water remaining in the Morning Water pail as the people were about to leave.
"Let's not waste this water, relatives," he said. "It's been prayed over."
It was still cool. Cool and good.
____
Like the imperceptible impressions carried by water, some things are simply elusive and beyond our grasp, like the infinite, or Wakan Tanka, our faults, or that last house fly. Or that mouse, the husband/partner/companion of the she-mouse, her teats evidencing a nursing litter, her neck snapped in the trap, her eyes bulging with surprise.
Elusive like the writhing body of the rattler slithering back toward its decapitated head. There must have been a flash of recognition, or insight, when it realized its death was upon it, that the supreme moment had arrived, but if it could only reconnect, if only it could undo the trajectory of the flat shovel that pinned it against the elm.
It knew, and I knew then what it was thinking. Magnified by the moment of death like a bullhorn, the snake thought, "I don't think I'm going to make it through this one."
____
Manny, my trainer and mentor, used to say, "You think you know more than me, don't you?"
And I did, at times, think I knew more than Manny. I thought I was smart enough to make the perceptive cocktail party comment that spoke more of the author than the poem penned, in which nobody in the assembly, absorbed in self-importance, was the least bit interested.
_____
Have you heard enough of the word, 'transparency', yet? How about 'traction', as in, a story 'getting traction'? I have. And what about 'went missing'? Pleeease. We're Americans, here. We don't talk like that. So why do American journalists have to talk like they're addressing a British audience? Next time you hear 'went missing' used, please shoot them, for me.
It was Manny who always used to say, "You gotta know your audience."
_____
Captain Idiotic on the local air waves. Coming to you from the Nebraska panhandle, the capital of idiotic commercial radio advertising. Don't take my word for it. Come within the broadcasting radius and listen for yourself.
Up here, we get the Indian station, KILI, which is off the air, and two stations of redneck country music, singing about their cheatin' ol' lady, their no-good ol' man, their momma or their daddy.
At night, on the AM band, they've got guys on there who've got ALL the answers. You need answers? Tune in to AM talk radio.
So, for my work, material is harvested from the radio, since there's no tv or electricty...like I'd actually have a tv if I had electricity. Not since '91. And my work, officially the 'Policy Analyst for the Office of Applied Methodolgy', requires input.
Some have asked what a policy analyst does. Well, we analyze policy. They don't ask me what I think when they're formulating policy. Only afterward. What it comes down to in real, everyday, 3-D world terms is, I'm the fourth or fifth guy in the pipe line. Like I said, no respect.
And that sort of flows over into Veteran's Day and my conversation in the van headed east with Tom, Milo, and Monique, who asked what the wings on my cap were for. I live for people to ask me that.
"Helicopters," I said sharply. "Eight-hundred and fifty combat hours."
"Vietnam?" she asked.
Tom interjected, laughing, "Yeah, we were winning when he got there."
Speaking for me hypothetically, Monique laughed, "'I'm just here to help,' huh?"
_____
Do writers need to keep doing shit, or can they just sit around and make stuff up?
At the reunion, Bev, who is now practicing medicine in Maine, asked me what I'd been doing. I told her I was practicing medicine, too. Some landscaping consulting, some English teaching, some TOEFL tutoring, some out-patient roadside medical assistance, some beach restoration, some program consulting, and full-time stand up comedy. And, of course, there's the shower caddies. And...yeah, the Lord's work.
Maybe she thought that was all in the past decade, but actually, within the last six months. May sound busy, but when spread out, part-time, there's a lot of days I ain't doing JACK.
That's largely because on this reservation, there's many days that pass when nobody's doing jack. That's because there ain't jack to do.
Tom B's girlfriend from Rome said, "It looks like all those guys do is sit around drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes."
So maybe that's why we're so big on ceremony. Something to do. Something to do for our spirits. Ain't nobody I know who's holy. Return to beginner's mind. Let the leader take out the garbage. Haul the stones, chop the wood, carry the water.
-end
You can tell how importantly people regard your email messages by how quickly they respond, or if they blow you off completely. Sent directly to 'trash'. The electronic compost pile. Turn it back to worms. Maybe later it can sustain an intelligent life form.
On a diminishing scale from 'urgent', to 'delete', where do you suppose your communiques fall?
I joined up to 'MySpace', and after a month, checked it out. Brovic has ZERO messages, ZERO voice mails, and ZERO friends. Great. Made my day. I'm envious of Kim.
Kim has 13,186 friends.
No respect. Didn't just happen recently. I came off the bench in a home basketball game in which the score was tied. My job was to pass the ball inbounds. Somebody else would take the shot. If I couldn't get the ball into the back court, I was to hit Bruce on the sideline, in the corner. He'd be there.
Okay, so the defender was all over the inbounds pass, right?...jumping up and down and waving his arms around, so I faked the ball to the back court and heaved it with all my might, down the sideline to Bruce, except that other guy stuck his head in the way and took it flush in the face from about five feet away.
SMACKO!
The crowd gasped, then laughed, then went, "Ooooooooh."
They had to call an official's time-out to check the kid out, all hunched over and holding his face, from which arose a hot circular reddening mass of welts from the raised pimples of basketball's surface, with the unforgettable NOSLIW etched into his face, his coach and the whole team, their fans, and even the officials glaring at me.
I was glad we were playing at home. I forget the score or who won.
Then once at the collegiate level, when we played St. Joseph's, who kicked our asses, the team bus left without me, and the janitor put me out of the building, where I sat on the stone steps until Coach came back in his car and got me, some four hours later.
And in baseball I set the school pitching record for Most-Runs-Scored-Against-In-A-Single-Inning, when the opposition, a team from Huntington, scored 17 runs in the first inning, and the coach just left me in there. After about nine runs I went over to the duguout and asked the coach to take me out. He said, "Hang in there. We'll get the other two outs."
It wasn't all my fault. There were a few fielding errors as well. We sucked.
By my senior year, they HAD to give me something, some kind of award, so they did, but it wasn't performance-based. I forget what it was. Somewhere in the bottom of a cardboard box that ended up among yard sale leftovers. Something like, 'Coaches Award'.
Why am I telling you this?
___
A history of comedy, I suppose. Even in the classroom, first as a clown, and later as a professor. Even the journalism was comedic, there toward the end, although it wasn't me who took off the micro-wave transmitter antenna from the mobile unit when it passed under the St. Mary's St. bridge. That was Charles.
And so, there was this comedy/tragedy thing going, a consistent modulating thread of trauma and carefree gaeity, horror to hilarity, a house of mirrors reflecting scars and laughter, and Bo sat here, oblivious to all the conversation going on around him, looked up blankly from the crossword puzzle at a spot on the wall, saying to no one, "I don't know shit about Shakespeare," then turned back down to the puzzle.
Every class needs a clown, and every ward needs a medic. Sometimes it's the same person. It could be in a helicopter, or maybe among amputees at Walter Reed Army Medical hospital. Maybe they'll laugh, if only for a little while.
____
"Outlaws!" Manuel shouted out into space as he stood inside the door, as if they were riding up on horses.
He got my attention up from the keyboard. "What's that?" I asked.
"Prisoners of war. Concentration camp 344," he said without looking over, still talking to that space in the distance upon which he always seems to be focused.
"Concentration camp 344? Where's that?" I asked.
"You're sittin' on it." he replied.
Manuel, who had ancestors die at Wounded Knee, and says he received his education in downtown Denver, skid row, is a fixture in the neighborhood and does some mechanical work. He'll typically enter and stand just inside the door like a Sergeant-At-Arms until someone says, "Sit down, Manuel. You're making me nervous."
Like a man who spends time alone and thirsts for listening company, in the span of fifteen minutes, Manuel covered history, philosophy, tribal government, the truck he's got to fix, a description of its transmission, the water lines to his house, and his ailments.
He was excited about rural water finally connecting him to the water line after five years of paperwork and waiting.
"I'm the first one in my family to get running water," he said. "Out of all the generations."
Manuel has an appreciation for water. He had a reason to be happy.
When living without running water or electricity, burning candles and carrying water jugs, one can gain an enormous gratitude for water. Chopping wood and carrying water. Hot water pot on the wood stove and simplistic living.
After sweat lodge purification ceremony a couple of weeks ago when there was but four of us who went in, there was still water left in the bottom of the bucket, and later I bottled it in a thermos and shared it around the next day, remembering what Kurt Fool Bull, from over on Rosebud (Cicangu Reservation, next door), had said one morning after a peyote ceremony when he noticed there was water remaining in the Morning Water pail as the people were about to leave.
"Let's not waste this water, relatives," he said. "It's been prayed over."
It was still cool. Cool and good.
____
Like the imperceptible impressions carried by water, some things are simply elusive and beyond our grasp, like the infinite, or Wakan Tanka, our faults, or that last house fly. Or that mouse, the husband/partner/companion of the she-mouse, her teats evidencing a nursing litter, her neck snapped in the trap, her eyes bulging with surprise.
Elusive like the writhing body of the rattler slithering back toward its decapitated head. There must have been a flash of recognition, or insight, when it realized its death was upon it, that the supreme moment had arrived, but if it could only reconnect, if only it could undo the trajectory of the flat shovel that pinned it against the elm.
It knew, and I knew then what it was thinking. Magnified by the moment of death like a bullhorn, the snake thought, "I don't think I'm going to make it through this one."
____
Manny, my trainer and mentor, used to say, "You think you know more than me, don't you?"
And I did, at times, think I knew more than Manny. I thought I was smart enough to make the perceptive cocktail party comment that spoke more of the author than the poem penned, in which nobody in the assembly, absorbed in self-importance, was the least bit interested.
_____
Have you heard enough of the word, 'transparency', yet? How about 'traction', as in, a story 'getting traction'? I have. And what about 'went missing'? Pleeease. We're Americans, here. We don't talk like that. So why do American journalists have to talk like they're addressing a British audience? Next time you hear 'went missing' used, please shoot them, for me.
It was Manny who always used to say, "You gotta know your audience."
_____
Captain Idiotic on the local air waves. Coming to you from the Nebraska panhandle, the capital of idiotic commercial radio advertising. Don't take my word for it. Come within the broadcasting radius and listen for yourself.
Up here, we get the Indian station, KILI, which is off the air, and two stations of redneck country music, singing about their cheatin' ol' lady, their no-good ol' man, their momma or their daddy.
At night, on the AM band, they've got guys on there who've got ALL the answers. You need answers? Tune in to AM talk radio.
So, for my work, material is harvested from the radio, since there's no tv or electricty...like I'd actually have a tv if I had electricity. Not since '91. And my work, officially the 'Policy Analyst for the Office of Applied Methodolgy', requires input.
Some have asked what a policy analyst does. Well, we analyze policy. They don't ask me what I think when they're formulating policy. Only afterward. What it comes down to in real, everyday, 3-D world terms is, I'm the fourth or fifth guy in the pipe line. Like I said, no respect.
And that sort of flows over into Veteran's Day and my conversation in the van headed east with Tom, Milo, and Monique, who asked what the wings on my cap were for. I live for people to ask me that.
"Helicopters," I said sharply. "Eight-hundred and fifty combat hours."
"Vietnam?" she asked.
Tom interjected, laughing, "Yeah, we were winning when he got there."
Speaking for me hypothetically, Monique laughed, "'I'm just here to help,' huh?"
_____
Do writers need to keep doing shit, or can they just sit around and make stuff up?
At the reunion, Bev, who is now practicing medicine in Maine, asked me what I'd been doing. I told her I was practicing medicine, too. Some landscaping consulting, some English teaching, some TOEFL tutoring, some out-patient roadside medical assistance, some beach restoration, some program consulting, and full-time stand up comedy. And, of course, there's the shower caddies. And...yeah, the Lord's work.
Maybe she thought that was all in the past decade, but actually, within the last six months. May sound busy, but when spread out, part-time, there's a lot of days I ain't doing JACK.
That's largely because on this reservation, there's many days that pass when nobody's doing jack. That's because there ain't jack to do.
Tom B's girlfriend from Rome said, "It looks like all those guys do is sit around drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes."
So maybe that's why we're so big on ceremony. Something to do. Something to do for our spirits. Ain't nobody I know who's holy. Return to beginner's mind. Let the leader take out the garbage. Haul the stones, chop the wood, carry the water.
-end
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Job To Make Him Laugh
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SD -
Lupe's lower lip hung down like a banana as he snoozed on the trip from town, back onto the reservation at dusk, his chin heavy on his chest, his belly full of Angela's bean & cheese burritos, his after-dinner smoke semi-dream backgrounded by hypnotic gravel road rumble under Chevy truck tires up Slim Buttes Road.
Just for its sheer shock value, and to demonstate to Lupe' that you don't have to be intoxicated to do something crazy, I swung far to the right as we rattled across the cattle guard demarking the Nebraska line from the rez, smacking with a loud metallic WHANGGG the red, bullet-ridden 'Use Your Seat Belts - It's The Law' sign with my passenger-side door mirror.
Lupe' leapt awake like electric shock, instinctively grabbing the dashboard with one hand and the seat with the other. "WHAT THE FUCK, HECTOR??!!"
Dull, grey clouds hung low over the hills and ridges, talking snow. It was brisk, the cottonwood leaves yellow, the daylight compressed and growing short. No visitors, and no new news. It was suddenly quiet and depressingly lonely on the rez, where everything, even joy, comes in from the outside. Lupe' had been talking of El Paso.
I looked over nonchalantly and asked, "Could you adjust that mirror, Lupe'?"
____
Lupe' sat here at the kitchen table in the timber-frame, twisting up a hand-rolled Bugler, while Manuel Martin sat rotating his shoulder, following a yoga stretch shown him by Tom Ballanco, tribal attorney and local Counsel-in-Residence, who had just gone out the door, headed for the airport. He could take off. Oglala Sioux Tribal Council was in lame duck, he said.
We were talking about some postures, or asanas, that are particularly beneficial to the interior muscle group beneath the scapula that was the apparent source of Manuel's discomfort. Lupe wasn't interested in the yoga conversation. He was still pissed.
During the day, you might hear someone say something like, 'Are you still bitchin' and moanin' around about yesterday?' Such comments, spoken in the company of others, often elicits a laugh for its general application to those ensnarled in, driven by, or re-invented from the past.
"I'm still mad about yesterday," Lupe' began. "I'm mad about today, and I'm mad about tomorrow."
"Mad at God, too, right?" I asked, laughing. "Can I quote you on that?"
Lupe' just frowned. "I got up arly this morning and went walking, down by the river, walking some kinda FAST," he said in animated demonstration from his seat. "Swinging my arms...sun is shining...I'm feeling good, talking to Tunkashila...telling him, 'Thank you, Tunkashila for this day of life.' "
"That's good, Lupe'," I said.
(Tunkashila is the Lakota name for God).
Lupe' continued. "Then ten minutes later, I'm startin' thinkin', and I'm pissed. I'm pissed off about yesterday, pissed about todaaaay, and pissed off about tomorrow."
"Can I quote you on that, Lupe'?" I asked.
Lupe' lit his cigarette and puffed on it, frowning, glancing sideways then gazing at the opposite wall, absorbed by a thought.
After a protracted silence, as if he hadn't heard a word of what Lupe' had said, Manuel, who usually doesn't say much, reached back and grabbed his neck, saying, "Yeah...that's good for the vertebrae."
___
In the effort to humor my despondent Mexican friend, I drew from the bottom of the barrel. "It's my job to make you laugh," I told him. "That's what I do!"
Lupe' ignored me and continued staring at the far wall, the smoke curling up from his fat fingers that bespoke a lifetime of hard work. "Tell Manuel about my out-patient, minor surgery on your head."
He glanced at me, then looked over at Manuel, then back at the wall. He didn't feel like it.
After another long silence, I looked across the table at Lupe' and asked, "Have you ever choked on a fart under the covers?"
Lupe' looked over and stared at me briefly, then the recollection of the event was reflected in his eyes.
"Yeah," he said. "One time I woke up coughing. I can't breathe," he says. "I get out of bed, I can't catch my breath. I tried to smoke a cigarette, and I can't. My hands are chaking. I'm sweating. I almost DIE!"
"Almost die?" I asked, using whaddyacallit?...Rogerian technique to elicit further disclosure and revelation.
"Yeah. I canna catch my breath. My heart's racing. I almost die."
"What was it you ate?" I asked.
"Something BAD!" he said.
"What about your old lady? Did it wake her up?"
"No," said Lupe'. She sleep through it."
____
So we watch some DVD movies now and then for a change of pace when Lupe' says he's about to 'Go Bananas'. Ever see 'Troy'? Could Helen look that good first thing in the morning, and were her teeth in that good of shape?
Took Lupe' into Pine Ridge Village for commodities, which he received and in turn gave to his son-in-law out east of town. I'd been dropped out of the system and didn't feel like making the trip over to the food stamp office to get re-qualified, so I skipped it, wondering, 'how do you get 'dropped out of the system' in a welfare state?
I mean, isn't the commod system the bottom link of the food chain to begin with? Isn't death the next lowest level?
There was an old man outside the commod warehouse, asking $20 for his entire monthly share. I offered him five bucks for his fruit, which he gladly took, then another two bucks for a can of juice. He wanted to give me the whole lot for the seven bucks, but I refused. Lupe' gave him another two bucks for nothing.
From the commod warehouse, we went down to the local phone outlet for a free 'commod phone', given to all tribal members. The lady there, who wore a pleasant social face that masked a tired resignation to Indian working mother, asked if I was an enrolled tribal member. I told her, no. She politely informed me that I needed to be a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe.
"Well, okay," I told her. "But since they're free, why can't I just have one?" I asked, trying to try her patience.
"You have to be a tribal member," she repeated calmly.
"Yeah, I know," I told her. "But why can't I just have one?"
Over at Sioux Nation shopping center, I ran into old friend Loren Black Elk, and Mike, a Vietnam Vet bro who needed enough for a gallon of gas, he said. Inside, they wanted $3.98 for a cantalope. No favor for Indians at Sioux Nation, everyone knows. No break. Cheaper at Wally World.
Right outside the door, a woman with a bunch of groceries and kids in the car had her hood up, getting a jump-start from another rez ride, a battery that surely wouldn't make it through the winter if it couldn't do it now.
Out on the highway, we gave cold Pepsis to the commod-bod flag girls on the road crew who took them appreciatively. Later, after returning home, I realized somewhere along the way, someone had lifted the five Gs of gas I carry as reserve since my gauge don't work.
I've grown used to the thievery.
As James says, 'People like that disturb the pond.'
___
The morning of my birthday I took the long round-about route to my Oglala PO box, via Pine Ridge. Out past Calico flats a long lanky hound of a dog sniffed at a carcass then made his move to cross the highway in front of me. I slowed down as he crossed, and the black SUV behind me zoomed around me in the oncoming lane.
The dog stopped and looked up blankly before being whacked by the SUV bumper, flipping out from underneath, stiff-legged and still as I passed by three seconds later.
___
They say the inversion postures are good for your whole being. Everything, inside out. Good for balance and all the internal organs. Good for the vertebrae. Everything, upside down. Somewhere in there, there's a forgiveness muscle. Turn upside down, sideways and horizontal. Give it a good workout. A massage. Let it go.
- end
10/14/06
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Based Upon Actual Events
Based Upon Actual Events
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SD - You said something about artistic freedom. We've got that here. The reservation is full of artists. I'm one myself, 'artist' being the lowest common denominator of what I am. But Bro Tom came up with a new appealing title just last night as we sat here with Tom Ballanco, who was flipping through the Omaha Herald.
'Policy Analyst for the Office of Applied Systems Methodology.' Good, huh? What would you like to be?
Quilt-makers, beaders, porcupine quill-workers, drum-makers, pipe-makers, sculptors, ceremonial items-makers, dancers, singers, actors, painters, illustrators, ledger-sheet artists, recording artists and con artists. Some have taken their craft to a whole new level.*
Take Boo Boo for instance. Boo Boo is one of the best con artists I know, among many on the rez who'll prey upon the German tourist, Colorado visitor, or other naive and unsuspecting soul. Take you for a head-spinning ride. When he leaves, you'll ask yourself, 'What the fuck just happened?'
Aloysius does amazingly beautiful quill work, and has one of the best voices for singing peyote songs, sun dance songs, and inipi songs, drawing from a vast inventory of memorized ceremonial songs handed down from men long since gone. Al will frequently 'reach deep down into his song bag' and pull one out we've never heard before. Later he'll tell us what grandpa it came from.
And Bo and Misty always have bead projects going over at their house, beads strewn out all over the place in little plastic containers, Misty cranking out low-end chokers, earrings and bracelets, while Bo creates the long-term, labor-intensive high-end items like moccasins, arrow quivers, knife sheaths, and vests, working for months on a single project.
Nathan Blind Man, just up the hill, does beautiful paintings, and across the road, Sandy was making hemp this and that two years ago, spinning her own fibers, and last year, gourd rattles that she and Lupe' accumulated during harvest, worked throughout the winter, and marketed this summer at Chadron's Fur Trade Days.
And last night, James Underbaggage, indisputably one of the best pipestone carvers on the reservation, if not the best, stopped by with an inventory of exquisitely carved pipes, coup sticks, whisks, knifes, and an assortment of other detailed and refined works depicting buffalo, bear, eagles and horses, each with a story behind it or into it, reflecting cultural or historical events and facts.
All these Indian artists are underpaid, taking 'anything I can get' for their undervalued work. Gas money to get home. And then the gallery will turn around and jack up the price 100%. That's just the way it is.
Across the rez, there's artists known for their expertise in what they do. People have time here to produce artwork. There's time for yoga, time for ceremony, time for writing, time for kids, time for attending to the needs of elders, and time for getting together and bullshitting with your friends and support group, because that's what we do. We just can't tell you what time it is.
A guy from Belgium, Mario, who arrived here with James, asked me last night, 'What time is it?'
Strange. Strange, indeed.
And last Wednesday, Gudrun, a return visitor from Germany for the past four or five years, asked what time we were going into inipi, the sweat lodge. "When everyone is ready," I answered her honestly. "Probably after dark, about 8:30 or nine or ten or ten-thirty."
Ended up going in about 11 p.m., coming out in the early hours, heading straight for the watermelon.
With the new moon and the power outtage from everyone running their AC, you couldn't see a thing out here. Maybe you've seen 'Earth At Night' from the space station? There's Rio! There's Paris! There's San Francisco!
We're somewhere in that big patch of blackness between Omaha and Salt Lake City. The 'Dead Zone'. Point the camera the other way, toward the Ort belt, and you'll have more light. The closest light there is to us, is Denver.
We're a low-priority terrorist target. "We didn't get no funds from Homeland Security," says Misty.
____
*a whole new. usage of 'a whole 'nuther' is discontinued because of it's widespread popularity and overuse, along with 'transparency', and 'gone missing'. Pleeease. When Wolf Blitzer and your hometown columnist start using it, it's time to lay it aside. Let's try 'Talibanized'.
A new lead, for instance, could go something like..."While distracted by the war in Iraq and Lebanon, areas of northern Pakistan and Afghanistan have re-Talibanized...'
____
Watch What You Think
Some readers wrote to inquire about the absence of the Dali Lama, the Earth Goddess, and other reverent figures at the Power Pie Conference held in early August here on the reservation.
Simple. There's only so many seats at the table. Dali Lama’s interests were already represented by Buddha, right? And the Earth Goddess finally got recognized only after she began to mumble and grumble. Everyone there could see her getting hot, her face flushed crimson, until even Jesus and Mohammed, at that time engaged in a bitter quarrel, noted her discomfort and yielded the floor.
“Better let her talk before she explodes,” said the God of Science & Technology, nudging the Lord of Recovered Youth, who moderated the conference.
Earth Goddess got up, and you can guess what SHE had to say.
Over here, we turned off the volume and just watched the close-ups of the eyes, just like on Championship Poker. Their eyes, and the lips of the Earth Goddess. She was giving them all a Black Chicago Street Ho tongue-lashing, and in the end, all them eyes were glancing up sheepishly and then back down at their hands.
As anyone in the intelligence community will tell you, you can get only so much info from wire-tapping and satellite surveillance. The best and most reliable information comes from human intel and the resources on the ground.
One of our succesful implants somehow convinced someone that he needed to be there, and provided us a rundown on the conference, giving us his take on the proceedings.
“Well…Jesus and Mohammed got into it again,” he began. “You got Jesus, who says, ‘turn the other cheek’, and Mohammed, who’s insistent on revenge, and right there you’ve got a fundamental problem.”
High security at the gate, he said. Everyone here was surprised he got in. “God of Fear tried to hold me back physically,” he laughed. “Then he didn’t want me to have my laptop. Told me, ‘You’re not even supposed to be here!’ I told them I represented everyone’s interests. They all had equal protection under the law.”
“What law? Who’s law?”
“Yeah, that’s what they said. ‘Law of the Jungle,’ I told them.”
____
Travel lite
Been on any trips lately? Trip out west? East? Road trip? Acid trip? Ego trip? Head trip? I been through a few head trips lately, some at the hands of others, some from collective karma, and some inevitably by my own unknowing self-design.
“Just scan your hand, Sir,”
“Why do I need to scan my hand?”
“Routine procedure, Sir.”
“Somebody’s data base? Can I see that screen? What’ve you got there, my whole life?”
The guy looked up from the screen. “Just scan your hand, please,” he repeated.
“Why don’t you use racial profiling? Don’t you know who you’re looking for by now? I’m a red, white, and black home-grown boy, an All-American decorated war vet. Mahatma Ghandi was my hero, for Christ’s sake. Don’t it say so on your screen?”
“Says here you’ve got a conviction,” said the uniformed man, looking up from the screen.
“Manny said that would be erased if I went to the ‘Nam. That was thirty-five years ago.”
“Well, Manny was wrong, wasn’t he?” he said. “Just scan your hand.”
Two or three or four big guys appeared from out of the mist, looking like they did time in San Quentin or the Oakland Raiders offensive line before joining the ranks of Homeland Security.
I did a double-take on the guy over my right shoulder. “Better do as he says,” he said.
“I can see you guys bought into all that ‘Code Red’ hype,” I said to the guy behind the screen. “Why you so tight-assed about outgoing? Shouldn’t you be more concerned about incoming?”
“Scan your hand, Sir!” he said.
“Must I?”
“Help him,” he said to Sasquatch.
“Okay, okay, okay,” I said. “Here. I’ll scan my hand.”
Placed my hand on the plate. One of those guys held my arm in place for me as the laser passed back and forth. A beep sounded and the eyes of the guy at the screen flitted across the lines that appeared. He looked up directly at me with a shocked expression, then said nervously to the sumo team, “Take him away.”
“I just want to know,” I told the inquisitor in the holding cell, “how you can tell from a DNA sample, what my intention is.”
“We’re way beyond that,” he said. “We’re living in a whole nuther world. No. It’s not for a crime you haven’t committed yet. You’ve got to watch what you think”
And then, there it was on the front page of the Sunday paper.
"See?" I said. "You thought I was bullshittin' you? I told you they'd start with prisoners."
The story covered monitoring and management of the State's pedophiles and parolees through ankle bracelets and GPS satellite tracking. A Google search showed us their state-of-the-art implant transmitter the size of a grain of rice. Smaller.
"First prisoners and pets. Then your kids, and then you. All for convenience or fear, whichever comes first. People love it!"
_____
I wrote, ‘Kiss Of Def’ in black magic marker on my flyswatter, and after showing it to Bo, Misty, Lupe’, Manuel, and Al, nobody laughed. Nobody got it. I realized nobody here on Pine Ridge could relate to BET (Black Entertainment TV) or Black humor, as in African American.
Gotta know your audience, Manny always used to say. But when the whole world’s your stage, and you're living in the Age of Advanced Televised Horror, Smut & Slime, you should be able to float anything by anybody.
But when you get into dicey areas like race, religion, nationalism, and body bags, there’ll always be someone out there nudging the guy next to him, saying, “What the fuck did he just say? That shit’s not funny, Man!”
That's the kind of stuff that can get you tossed out on your ear, or worse, in places like Texas and Wyoming, where they'll drag you behind their trucks. And those guys weren't even comedians. They were just black, and in Wyoming, gay. In some humorless places, people must really be afraid.
Accordingly, I realize the entries dealing with Mr. Monroe’s Used Car Lot & All Station, Niggas In Charge, the Louis Farrakhan Homophobic Sermon, and Cash Jackson’s Murder of Leroi Levers might have limited appeal.
So then, you've got to watch what you say about the Honorable Louis Farrakhan and the Prophet Mohammed. They've got followers who'll git ya! Jesus...he's a lot more tolerant. Believes in free will, free speech, and forgiveness. Can appreciate a good joke. Just have to watch what you think.
_____
We were sitting around the table under the air conditioning in the Big House, fumbling through newspapers and magazines and listening to the news on NPR. Outside it was 103. Misty announced she was going to bring food for tonight after sweat.
“Chicken?” I asked. “I’ll eat chicken aaaaaaaany way you want to fix it. Fried chicken…baked chicken…chicken and riiiiiiiice…chicken and…dumplings…”
“Barbeque Chicken,” added Bo. "Chicken nuggets."
“Chicken wings…”
“Chicken Tettrazini,” shouted Carl from the sidelines. “Chicken Caciattori.”
“Chicken and vegetables,” I continued. “Chicken cordon bluuuuuu. KFC chicken...Popeye chicken...chicken soup…chicken bullion cubes.”
Misty and Olowan chuckled.
“Deep fried chicken,” added Tom. “My favorite. Chicken pot pie. Chicken with cranberries. Chicken with crackers...chicken gizzards.”
Just when it seemed we had played it out, I added, “Chicken of the Sea.”
That one sat there for a moment, then I think it was Bo who finally said, “That’s fucking TUNA, man!”
Lupe’ rose and went to the kitchen, fumbling around in the cupboards, slamming the doors, looking to stir up a snack.
Got any chicken, Lupe’?”
From the kitchen, Lupe’ responded, “No. Only turrrkey.”
_____
Praying With Your Enemies
"BE FOREWARNED! TRAILER BOOBY-TRAPPED. NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ACCIDENTS OR INJURIES. Go Ahead, Fuckhead, Make My Day!"
I left the note posted on my door before leaving for the sundance, which would have me gone for four or five days. This was back in June, when I came home for the first time in six months to learn someone during my absence had cleaned me out. Already told you. Most everything but the books. Even the shaving kit, for Christ'ssake.
They knew I was a Vietnam vet, so anything could happen, right? That note just might be true. I was hoping it would work, causing just enough wonder to prevent them from coming back for the cordless screwdriver, .22 calibre rifle, and anything else of value they'd missed in their prior break-in.
The note worked for at least one person, a sun dance sister who stopped there before proceeding to the sun dance grounds.
"I saw your note," she said.
"Did you go in?"
"No."
And then, donchaknow, one of the alleged thieves, in his 'sober mode' as Tom put it, showed up on the drum at the dance. As James says, laughing, 'You might be holy, but I'm holier than YOU!' The thief went ahead and sang, and I went ahead and danced.
And then again, last week, two of the three alleged thieves (the Main Perp and his psychologically- challenged brother) showed up for sweat, coming around shaking hands like nothing ever happened, or that I don't know that they know I know who they are and what they did. As Lupe' says, 'That's some kinda tough!'
We went ahead and prayed.
"In there (in that circle, around those stones), you've got to pray for everybody," Lupe' said.
So I've been thinking about what some of you said about forgiveness and praying for your enemies. We can forgive people, but that doesn't mean we have to like or hang out with them, does it? When driving by their house the other night, I was swept over by a wave of sorrow and compassion for their miserable state, no more miserable than yours or mine, and I thought, "May God Bless You."
That's progress, huh?
And those things they took? My late father's hand-me-down tools, my drums and all that other stuff...it all comes and goes anyway. Don't expect any apologies, confessions, or compensation. Laugh it off, write if off for living in Indian Country.
- end
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SD - You said something about artistic freedom. We've got that here. The reservation is full of artists. I'm one myself, 'artist' being the lowest common denominator of what I am. But Bro Tom came up with a new appealing title just last night as we sat here with Tom Ballanco, who was flipping through the Omaha Herald.
'Policy Analyst for the Office of Applied Systems Methodology.' Good, huh? What would you like to be?
Quilt-makers, beaders, porcupine quill-workers, drum-makers, pipe-makers, sculptors, ceremonial items-makers, dancers, singers, actors, painters, illustrators, ledger-sheet artists, recording artists and con artists. Some have taken their craft to a whole new level.*
Take Boo Boo for instance. Boo Boo is one of the best con artists I know, among many on the rez who'll prey upon the German tourist, Colorado visitor, or other naive and unsuspecting soul. Take you for a head-spinning ride. When he leaves, you'll ask yourself, 'What the fuck just happened?'
Aloysius does amazingly beautiful quill work, and has one of the best voices for singing peyote songs, sun dance songs, and inipi songs, drawing from a vast inventory of memorized ceremonial songs handed down from men long since gone. Al will frequently 'reach deep down into his song bag' and pull one out we've never heard before. Later he'll tell us what grandpa it came from.
And Bo and Misty always have bead projects going over at their house, beads strewn out all over the place in little plastic containers, Misty cranking out low-end chokers, earrings and bracelets, while Bo creates the long-term, labor-intensive high-end items like moccasins, arrow quivers, knife sheaths, and vests, working for months on a single project.
Nathan Blind Man, just up the hill, does beautiful paintings, and across the road, Sandy was making hemp this and that two years ago, spinning her own fibers, and last year, gourd rattles that she and Lupe' accumulated during harvest, worked throughout the winter, and marketed this summer at Chadron's Fur Trade Days.
And last night, James Underbaggage, indisputably one of the best pipestone carvers on the reservation, if not the best, stopped by with an inventory of exquisitely carved pipes, coup sticks, whisks, knifes, and an assortment of other detailed and refined works depicting buffalo, bear, eagles and horses, each with a story behind it or into it, reflecting cultural or historical events and facts.
All these Indian artists are underpaid, taking 'anything I can get' for their undervalued work. Gas money to get home. And then the gallery will turn around and jack up the price 100%. That's just the way it is.
Across the rez, there's artists known for their expertise in what they do. People have time here to produce artwork. There's time for yoga, time for ceremony, time for writing, time for kids, time for attending to the needs of elders, and time for getting together and bullshitting with your friends and support group, because that's what we do. We just can't tell you what time it is.
A guy from Belgium, Mario, who arrived here with James, asked me last night, 'What time is it?'
Strange. Strange, indeed.
And last Wednesday, Gudrun, a return visitor from Germany for the past four or five years, asked what time we were going into inipi, the sweat lodge. "When everyone is ready," I answered her honestly. "Probably after dark, about 8:30 or nine or ten or ten-thirty."
Ended up going in about 11 p.m., coming out in the early hours, heading straight for the watermelon.
With the new moon and the power outtage from everyone running their AC, you couldn't see a thing out here. Maybe you've seen 'Earth At Night' from the space station? There's Rio! There's Paris! There's San Francisco!
We're somewhere in that big patch of blackness between Omaha and Salt Lake City. The 'Dead Zone'. Point the camera the other way, toward the Ort belt, and you'll have more light. The closest light there is to us, is Denver.
We're a low-priority terrorist target. "We didn't get no funds from Homeland Security," says Misty.
____
*a whole new. usage of 'a whole 'nuther' is discontinued because of it's widespread popularity and overuse, along with 'transparency', and 'gone missing'. Pleeease. When Wolf Blitzer and your hometown columnist start using it, it's time to lay it aside. Let's try 'Talibanized'.
A new lead, for instance, could go something like..."While distracted by the war in Iraq and Lebanon, areas of northern Pakistan and Afghanistan have re-Talibanized...'
____
Watch What You Think
Some readers wrote to inquire about the absence of the Dali Lama, the Earth Goddess, and other reverent figures at the Power Pie Conference held in early August here on the reservation.
Simple. There's only so many seats at the table. Dali Lama’s interests were already represented by Buddha, right? And the Earth Goddess finally got recognized only after she began to mumble and grumble. Everyone there could see her getting hot, her face flushed crimson, until even Jesus and Mohammed, at that time engaged in a bitter quarrel, noted her discomfort and yielded the floor.
“Better let her talk before she explodes,” said the God of Science & Technology, nudging the Lord of Recovered Youth, who moderated the conference.
Earth Goddess got up, and you can guess what SHE had to say.
Over here, we turned off the volume and just watched the close-ups of the eyes, just like on Championship Poker. Their eyes, and the lips of the Earth Goddess. She was giving them all a Black Chicago Street Ho tongue-lashing, and in the end, all them eyes were glancing up sheepishly and then back down at their hands.
As anyone in the intelligence community will tell you, you can get only so much info from wire-tapping and satellite surveillance. The best and most reliable information comes from human intel and the resources on the ground.
One of our succesful implants somehow convinced someone that he needed to be there, and provided us a rundown on the conference, giving us his take on the proceedings.
“Well…Jesus and Mohammed got into it again,” he began. “You got Jesus, who says, ‘turn the other cheek’, and Mohammed, who’s insistent on revenge, and right there you’ve got a fundamental problem.”
High security at the gate, he said. Everyone here was surprised he got in. “God of Fear tried to hold me back physically,” he laughed. “Then he didn’t want me to have my laptop. Told me, ‘You’re not even supposed to be here!’ I told them I represented everyone’s interests. They all had equal protection under the law.”
“What law? Who’s law?”
“Yeah, that’s what they said. ‘Law of the Jungle,’ I told them.”
____
Travel lite
Been on any trips lately? Trip out west? East? Road trip? Acid trip? Ego trip? Head trip? I been through a few head trips lately, some at the hands of others, some from collective karma, and some inevitably by my own unknowing self-design.
“Just scan your hand, Sir,”
“Why do I need to scan my hand?”
“Routine procedure, Sir.”
“Somebody’s data base? Can I see that screen? What’ve you got there, my whole life?”
The guy looked up from the screen. “Just scan your hand, please,” he repeated.
“Why don’t you use racial profiling? Don’t you know who you’re looking for by now? I’m a red, white, and black home-grown boy, an All-American decorated war vet. Mahatma Ghandi was my hero, for Christ’s sake. Don’t it say so on your screen?”
“Says here you’ve got a conviction,” said the uniformed man, looking up from the screen.
“Manny said that would be erased if I went to the ‘Nam. That was thirty-five years ago.”
“Well, Manny was wrong, wasn’t he?” he said. “Just scan your hand.”
Two or three or four big guys appeared from out of the mist, looking like they did time in San Quentin or the Oakland Raiders offensive line before joining the ranks of Homeland Security.
I did a double-take on the guy over my right shoulder. “Better do as he says,” he said.
“I can see you guys bought into all that ‘Code Red’ hype,” I said to the guy behind the screen. “Why you so tight-assed about outgoing? Shouldn’t you be more concerned about incoming?”
“Scan your hand, Sir!” he said.
“Must I?”
“Help him,” he said to Sasquatch.
“Okay, okay, okay,” I said. “Here. I’ll scan my hand.”
Placed my hand on the plate. One of those guys held my arm in place for me as the laser passed back and forth. A beep sounded and the eyes of the guy at the screen flitted across the lines that appeared. He looked up directly at me with a shocked expression, then said nervously to the sumo team, “Take him away.”
“I just want to know,” I told the inquisitor in the holding cell, “how you can tell from a DNA sample, what my intention is.”
“We’re way beyond that,” he said. “We’re living in a whole nuther world. No. It’s not for a crime you haven’t committed yet. You’ve got to watch what you think”
And then, there it was on the front page of the Sunday paper.
"See?" I said. "You thought I was bullshittin' you? I told you they'd start with prisoners."
The story covered monitoring and management of the State's pedophiles and parolees through ankle bracelets and GPS satellite tracking. A Google search showed us their state-of-the-art implant transmitter the size of a grain of rice. Smaller.
"First prisoners and pets. Then your kids, and then you. All for convenience or fear, whichever comes first. People love it!"
_____
I wrote, ‘Kiss Of Def’ in black magic marker on my flyswatter, and after showing it to Bo, Misty, Lupe’, Manuel, and Al, nobody laughed. Nobody got it. I realized nobody here on Pine Ridge could relate to BET (Black Entertainment TV) or Black humor, as in African American.
Gotta know your audience, Manny always used to say. But when the whole world’s your stage, and you're living in the Age of Advanced Televised Horror, Smut & Slime, you should be able to float anything by anybody.
But when you get into dicey areas like race, religion, nationalism, and body bags, there’ll always be someone out there nudging the guy next to him, saying, “What the fuck did he just say? That shit’s not funny, Man!”
That's the kind of stuff that can get you tossed out on your ear, or worse, in places like Texas and Wyoming, where they'll drag you behind their trucks. And those guys weren't even comedians. They were just black, and in Wyoming, gay. In some humorless places, people must really be afraid.
Accordingly, I realize the entries dealing with Mr. Monroe’s Used Car Lot & All Station, Niggas In Charge, the Louis Farrakhan Homophobic Sermon, and Cash Jackson’s Murder of Leroi Levers might have limited appeal.
So then, you've got to watch what you say about the Honorable Louis Farrakhan and the Prophet Mohammed. They've got followers who'll git ya! Jesus...he's a lot more tolerant. Believes in free will, free speech, and forgiveness. Can appreciate a good joke. Just have to watch what you think.
_____
We were sitting around the table under the air conditioning in the Big House, fumbling through newspapers and magazines and listening to the news on NPR. Outside it was 103. Misty announced she was going to bring food for tonight after sweat.
“Chicken?” I asked. “I’ll eat chicken aaaaaaaany way you want to fix it. Fried chicken…baked chicken…chicken and riiiiiiiice…chicken and…dumplings…”
“Barbeque Chicken,” added Bo. "Chicken nuggets."
“Chicken wings…”
“Chicken Tettrazini,” shouted Carl from the sidelines. “Chicken Caciattori.”
“Chicken and vegetables,” I continued. “Chicken cordon bluuuuuu. KFC chicken...Popeye chicken...chicken soup…chicken bullion cubes.”
Misty and Olowan chuckled.
“Deep fried chicken,” added Tom. “My favorite. Chicken pot pie. Chicken with cranberries. Chicken with crackers...chicken gizzards.”
Just when it seemed we had played it out, I added, “Chicken of the Sea.”
That one sat there for a moment, then I think it was Bo who finally said, “That’s fucking TUNA, man!”
Lupe’ rose and went to the kitchen, fumbling around in the cupboards, slamming the doors, looking to stir up a snack.
Got any chicken, Lupe’?”
From the kitchen, Lupe’ responded, “No. Only turrrkey.”
_____
Praying With Your Enemies
"BE FOREWARNED! TRAILER BOOBY-TRAPPED. NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ACCIDENTS OR INJURIES. Go Ahead, Fuckhead, Make My Day!"
I left the note posted on my door before leaving for the sundance, which would have me gone for four or five days. This was back in June, when I came home for the first time in six months to learn someone during my absence had cleaned me out. Already told you. Most everything but the books. Even the shaving kit, for Christ'ssake.
They knew I was a Vietnam vet, so anything could happen, right? That note just might be true. I was hoping it would work, causing just enough wonder to prevent them from coming back for the cordless screwdriver, .22 calibre rifle, and anything else of value they'd missed in their prior break-in.
The note worked for at least one person, a sun dance sister who stopped there before proceeding to the sun dance grounds.
"I saw your note," she said.
"Did you go in?"
"No."
And then, donchaknow, one of the alleged thieves, in his 'sober mode' as Tom put it, showed up on the drum at the dance. As James says, laughing, 'You might be holy, but I'm holier than YOU!' The thief went ahead and sang, and I went ahead and danced.
And then again, last week, two of the three alleged thieves (the Main Perp and his psychologically- challenged brother) showed up for sweat, coming around shaking hands like nothing ever happened, or that I don't know that they know I know who they are and what they did. As Lupe' says, 'That's some kinda tough!'
We went ahead and prayed.
"In there (in that circle, around those stones), you've got to pray for everybody," Lupe' said.
So I've been thinking about what some of you said about forgiveness and praying for your enemies. We can forgive people, but that doesn't mean we have to like or hang out with them, does it? When driving by their house the other night, I was swept over by a wave of sorrow and compassion for their miserable state, no more miserable than yours or mine, and I thought, "May God Bless You."
That's progress, huh?
And those things they took? My late father's hand-me-down tools, my drums and all that other stuff...it all comes and goes anyway. Don't expect any apologies, confessions, or compensation. Laugh it off, write if off for living in Indian Country.
- end
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