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

Not Everybody Does A Lot Of Things

Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SD – Sometimes it seems that love might be found encapsulated in the nose cone payload atop a Saturn V booster rocket, outbound beyond Neptune, en route to the Ort Belt or perhaps another star system. What a ride! Life there could be no less desolate, lonely, or robotic. Earth was such a hateful place, with such holes and vacuums, and at night the stars got in the way.

Lupe’, in the dog house, out, and back in again after pay day, spends his days sipping coffee, telling tales, swatting flies, and manufacturing his own hand-rolled cigarettes from a large 1 lb. bulk ‘Bonanza’ bag of ‘Gambler’, American Blend, Premium Cigarette Tobacco, made in the USA. A couple of months ago, over in Pine Ridge Village, someone burned down his trailer home. But that's not what had him sad. It was the dog house.


Heartbroken and facing a bleak and empty future, he lamented, "We're not supposed to live like this, Bro."

"What’s that?” not looking up from the chessboard and Bo at the kitchen table.

“Alone,” said Lupe’, eyes full of desperation.

“You mean to shape and balance our one-sided universes? You’re never alone, Lupe’. That’s what the Good Book said.”

“Ask and ye shall receive,” I said, handing Misty a freezer pop. “Good Book said that, too.”

____

Yeah, well, that may be. Lupe’ wasn’t alone too long. He had to move over for the sixty Israeli and Palestinian kids who rolled in from the Middle East on a charter tour bus and took up rat pack residence over in the timber-frame house, declining any of the three big tipis set up for them at the last minute by Tom and Lupe’, the last one in the dark, by headlights, about nine o’clock..

“They’re afraid,” someone said.

“Afraid of what?”

“Everything.”

Sixty of ‘em standing in line for the bathroom in the morning, none of ‘em using the outhouse or sleeping in the tipis.


This was after Tom had gone up to Manderson earlier that afternoon to retrieve the 30-footer that Alex White Plume had brought back from Bear Butte, where Tom, Bo, and I had set it up the previous week for the Bear Butte Indian Protest against the bars in the vicinity, selling to the motorcycle crowd assembled for the annual Sturgis biker rally.

Bear Butte sits about five miles out of Sturgis, and within the past couple of years, developers have encroached upon this most sacred site of many Northwest Native American tribes. People go there, like the pilgrimage to Mecca. Hanblecheya, the vision quest, purification, and other sacred events are performed there by a half-dozen tribes, maybe more.

They’ve put a biker bar right at the base of the mountain, and the Indians didn’t have to torch it, like some suggested, but after the peaceful demonstration through town, a rain came down the mountain and washed it out.


Down on Main Street Sturgis, everyone was same same, but different. All the beefy self-styled outcasts cast from a common mold, wearing the same dew rag skull cloth, same wrap-around sunglasses, same cut-off T-shirts, same leather vest, same Harley Davidson patches, same tattoos, same wallets-on-a-chain, same worn blue jeans, and same heavy-ass leather boots. Don’t show up out of uniform or on a Suzuki. Gotta have the uniform, or you can’t belong to the club.

Tom and I sat eating our $29 sandwich lunch at one of a thousand vendors while filling the Indian protestors camp’s two 450-gallon water tanks, clearly out of place in our tennis shoes and sandals as the bikers slow-crawled, gurgling down the street, demonstrating their tailpipes and unique personal independence, their women on the back, all looking like someone you’d want on your side in a barroom fight.

Peaceful event, all around, if you don’t count the murder at one of the camping grounds and the subsequent arrest of the Hells Angels. In the end, everybody went home, wearing the same commemorative T-shirt or patch of Sturgis 2006. Best bet for the Indians, someone suggested, was to buy the land.

_____


Along with those sixty kids from the Jerusalem Project, Jesus stopped through the other day for a cup of coffee, asking, “You guys seen Buddha lately?”

“Nah. Not for a couple of years. You guys still friends?”

Jesus just smiled. He left after two cups, laughing over his shoulder as he went out the door, “Don’t bother me. Can’t you see I’m a busy man? I’m a VERY busy man.”

“Don’t let in the flies!”

What a character. He knows just what to say to make our day. Even got Lupe to lighten up.

“I used to know that guy before he was a nobody,” said Al, indignantly. Everybody laughed.


Then Jesus suddenly reappeared in the doorway. "I heard that!" he said sternly, looking directly at Al. We all quickly straightened up, everyone afraid to crack a smile, all our eyes darting back and forth between Jesus and Al. Then he burst out laughing, pointed his finger at us and said, "Gotcha!" then left for good.

According to Aloysius, who was present, seated far in the back of the room, Jesus and the rest were here to get everyone together for the semi-annual Major and Lesser Gods slicing up the Power Pie Conference, the mind-control project, held this year in the Oglala Sioux tribal council building on the rez.

All the heavy hitters were there, with the extinct Gods of Greece and Valhalla watching from the perimeter in the balcony. Odin and Loki, Zeus, Osiris, and Elvis sidelined with injuries and obsolescence.

After taking care of old business, rules of conduct and general areas of agreement, they proceeded directly to more sensitive dogma issues and contemporary topics, Mohammed and Jesus got into it again, pushing each other’s buttons with their zeal for exclusivity, virgin birth claims, Jerusalem land disputes, vengeance and afterlife promises, raising eyebrows around the table.

The Spirit of Water was despondent, as usual. “I support all life on the planet, but nobody says thank you. They take me for granted,” he said. “I get no respect. Look what they do to me. Elvis gets more adoration.”

Of course, you know what Elvis said. “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

Lesser, but no less divine deities, such as the local White Buffalo Calf Woman, made simple requests with her fractional time allotment; “I want my believers to pray with tobacco and a pipe,” she said.

Though representing a mere one thousandth of one percent of the earth’s population, her believers in the western hemisphere still address her, and partly because she was hosting the event, everybody said, ‘Cool. No problem.’ She was nice. No opposition.

Same with motorcycle worship. ‘They’ve all got to look alike, and put me before anything else,’ said the God of Four-Stroke Engines. Again, thumbs up, all the way around. Lots of rubber stamp action prior to lunch.

The Pope, however, was another story. After a fiery and impassioned speech on relevance and his continued insistence upon recognition of Jesus’ mom as his believers’ primary object of devotion, he accused Buddha of sleeping throughout his entire presentation, and reiterated his previously disputed stance on abortion and DNA strand implant.

‘Cheat, Steal, Deceit, and Lies,’ cried the Pope, “Take what comes to you…something crawlin’ out of the Amazon,” to which Buddha had interjected, smiling, ‘Karmic retribution. Sutras, mudras, prayers and poses,’ his only utterance during the proceedings.

The Pope stood pale, stunned and confused. God of Oil and Natural Gas nearly choked on his water, and God of Obscene Consumption spoke out of hand, commanding the Pope to sit down, resulting in a hot and undiplomatic exchange among the inner ring, joined by Kali, Satan, and the Bodhisattva of Refugees and Orphans, rife with charges of decline and ascendancy. In short order, the tribal council chamber was reduced to chaos, a familiarity within those walls.

______

“How did we get here, from there?” asked Carl, sitting here at the kitchen table with Lupe’.

“Were we talking about a line of thought, relationships, or life circumstances?”

We were talking about a line of thought, an elusive, evaporating, hypnogogic dream, a blueberry-induced rant, a short-term memory retrace of the political history of Southeast Asia, French Indochina, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, UXOs (unexploded ordinance), motorbike down the trail, a vacation.

Lupe’ was thinking about relationships, the dog house, and the rez, his eyes staring vacantly at the tabletop grain. How did he get here from there? From where he was, across the road, from where they were?

How did they get to where they are now from where they used to be? How did you?

______


Aloysius laughed at Lupe’s distress and teased him, speaking to God for him, “Oh, Tunkashila. I’m here for my present!”

“NO! NOW YOU MUST BE PUNISHED!” growled Aloysius’ angry God of Vodka.


Lupe’ picked up the ‘Iroquois’ hat that Tom had left on the table in the timber-frame house and slowly read the lettering. “Irrrr…aqis. Iraqis.”

He’d heard the word on the news. Almost laughed out loud, had I not been checked by my own ignorance, smiling down at the keyboard. Clone, however, couldn’t help himself, blurting out, “That’s ‘Iro-quois,’ you dumb fuck.”


Earlier he had said he saw the spirits dancing in the lodge. “‘When you suffer, we suffer,’ they told me,” Lupe said. “ ‘Don’t cry,’ they said. ‘Let’s Dance!’ ”


We were trying to retrace a line of thought. “What was it, Carl?”

“It’s not for everybody. What were we talking about? What was the lead-in? How did we get here from there? It’s not for everybody. The sweat lodge? The peyote ceremony? The Catholic Church? Sturgis?”

“A lot of things aren’t for everybody. The Pentecostals, the snake handlers. Not everybody does a lot of things.”

______

We have some idea of how strong we’re doing by how many people show up for sweat on Wednesday nights. We often don’t go in until ten o’clock, coming out after midnight. That’s tough for the little kids.

A Wednesday ago there was six of ‘em in there, along with fourteen adults. Old-time ‘Aim-ster’ (A.I.M. American Indian Movement) Gangster Melvin Lee came down from the Bear Butte protest minus one foot recently from diabetes, talking words of encouragement to the younger generation, reminding us how each generation has lost more and more, and how important it is to retain Bear Butte as a sacred site, not only for Indians, but for our country’s health, and that of the world.

Everybody said, “Aho,” when he finished.


It’s been sobering lately. Ernest’s one-year memorial was just last week, with 37 taking in peyote meeting through the night, and another 150 turning up for the main feed and giveaway, including the legion post honor guard.

It was a huge giveaway for which Loretta had prepared a year, and the meeting details put together on short notice in Tom’s free time. An incredible effort, taken for granted by those N.A.C. (Native American Church) members to whom it is custom, but bewildering to Denise Albin from New York, here with her husband Mike, both attending their first peyote meeting. Mike had a bit of a rough time, but toughed it out. Well, it’s not for everybody.

And Christine Red Cloud’s been in the hospital, scaring everyone. And those guys went off the road over by the Mormon church west of Pine Ridge Village last Friday and T-boned a tree, killing three of four, pitched through the windshield. High speed & alcohol. What else?

The phone rang in the Big House as six of us sat around, awaiting the arrival of Bo and Misty from Pine Ridge. “That’s Misty,” I said. “I just sent her a mental message to call.”

Lupe answered the phone, listened for a moment, squinted his eyes and handed it to me. Misty said they were running late. Traffic was backed up all over town. There was a big wreck. Ambulances, fire trucks, and helicopters, she said.


So, we were untying knots earlier in the day and praying for peace that night. A kid’s shoe laces, tipi ropes, relationships, muscles, and our rosary of life. Patience is required. Yoga helps.

This dog here, B.G., Bee Gee, or Beege, daughter of White Girl, niece of Watecha, requires patience. She just had five pups and has never let anyone pet her. “You ever pet that dog?” I’ve asked several people. They all say no.

Mia got close, but even she couldn’t touch her. I’ve been feeding her since she was a pup, and she’s never let me pet her or remove ticks from her face in the height of tick season. She trusts no one, man, woman, or child. Same gunman that shot her in the ass, killed her mother. There’s something admirable, but sadly pathetic in her independence, kind of like those bikers.

Reason is, Lupe’ traumatized her when she was a pup.

_____


Patience required. We can’t become too discouraged in our struggle with and against hopelessness. There’s the Mission.

“Is this part of the mission?” I asked Tom as we loaded four dozen chairs into the back of his truck.

“Tangentially,” he replied.

Just like those six cars with kids and flats on Slim Buttes Road in the last three weeks, its current state in the worst condition in recorded memory. It’s part of the mission. You’ve gotta stop if there ain’t a man already there. Why is it there’s always babies on board? And why is it that they always ain’t got no jack?

So it’s a trade-in, I told Lupe’. The Mission. How did you get here from where you were? A Rocky Mountain log cabin on a stream for a shitty little place on the rez. A Volvo wagon for a shitty 1962 Chevy truck. A Ph.D. for a G.E.D. Trade stress and clocks and schedules for…whatever we’ve got here…artistic freedom…a place to work up a comedy routine.


“Behind SCHEDULE?” asked Bo, incredulously as he whipped his pickup truck through a curve on Slim Buttes Road on our way to Chadron, two hours later than when we said we’d be there. “What schedule?”

“There ain’t no schedules,” added Misty.


The chief asked the treaty negotiator what all the Indians would do once they were put onto the reservation.

“You can work on your artistic freedom.”

_____

Put Me In, Coach


“No way,” said Tom. “No way.”

“Why not?” I asked. “I’ve got enough material to take it on the road. A good, solid twenty minutes…The Tightrope Walker…you’ve seen it…pretty good, huh?...the African-American Bowhunter…the Minister Louis Farrakhan Homophobic Sermon…ha ha…the Burmese God… Jesus and Diablo in Guadalajara…it needs some fine-tuning in some areas, but…”

“Yeah, like, make it funny? No way,” he repeated. “No way they’re going to let you up on a stage in front of a thousand G.I.s in Baghdad. They’d throw you out on your ass. How you gonna get there?” he asked.

“They buy your ticket...The Plantation Slave afraid of runnin’ off to the woods…Lord of the Flyswatter…the Slow-mo Replay…ain’t nobody’s ever done that on stage before, man. THAT’S some original shit.”

“How you gonna pull it off?” Tom asked.


“Well, you know…contact the Office of Special Services, whomever contracts comedians for foreign service…probably someone in the Pentagon…probably have to send an audition tape or perform for some kinda committee…I wouldn’t be the lead act...I’d be the uh, the warm-up, the uh, preliminary…someone who could come off the bench if somebody else cancelled…you know, like a short-notice kind of a thing…”

“No way. They’d throw your ass out. As soon as you start joking around about something like DU munitions, they’d…”

“No, no. I wouldn’t use VA hospital material or amputees or nothing…I’d keep it sanitized…I could be the ‘go-to’ guy. A preliminary for a big name act, you know, someone like…preliminary…preliminary…

“…I’ll never forget the day Manny came running into the gym, all excited, shouting, ‘Nosotros tenamos un grande preliminario peliar este Novembre que biene abentro del coliseo!’ ”

I had to stop him and tell him to slow it down and talk English. Manny said with the right people behind us, the right training and the right promotion, he could take me all the way to de top! If I stayed away from ‘that bad crowd,’ he said, I could be somebody. He’d just gotten us a major preliminary event at the coliseum, and if I listened to him and played my cards right, we could go all the way to the top, he said.

But did I listen to Manny?

No.

Tom was either asleep or just not responding from his prone position on the couch.

“No. I didn’t listen. Couldn’t stay away from that bad crowd. And now, look at me. Judge says, ‘Fifteen years in the State Prisson, or take your chances in da ‘Nam.’ I told her, ‘That’s easy, Your Honors. I’ll take my chances in da fucking ‘Nam.’

She leap up, pointing her finger and hollered, ‘DON’T use language like that in my fucking courtroom! TWO TOURS! TWO TOURS!’ she hollered out as the military police were escorting me under the armpits out the door. Went to the ‘Nam…pulled two tours…and the rest is history.”

Tom didn’t stir on the couch, but Lupe’, Aloysius, and Manuel thought it was funny.

“…I’ve come off the bench before. I used to sit down there, thinking, ‘Put me in, Coach. Put me in.’ Starters got in foul trouble, ‘nuther guy busted his ankle and went to the locker room…we’re down by 18 points and the coach looks up at the clock and finally looks down the bench. I’m looking right back at him. Crowd’s yelling, ‘PUT HIM IN! PUT HIM IN!’ so coach comes down there and grabs the front of my jersey, which I had to turn around so the big number’s in the back, and yanks me to my feet, saying, “Get in there!”

Scored three straight times down the floor, got a steal, an assist, scored again, got fouled and took it to the line for a three-point play. Brought the game to within four points, coach called a time-out and pulled me out of the game.”

Tom woke up laughing, saying, “He put the good guys back in,” which everyone here in the kitchen laughed at, but what in fact, was true, even the guy with the busted ankle, all taped up. Another trade-in. Coming in off the bench for undergrad tuition.


_____

Someone on the radio who dropped out of law school and became a journalist said something about IEDs (‘improvised explosive device’ – the military has acronyms for everything) being up from 1200-a-month, one year ago, to 2400 this year. A person could do the math. That’s all over Iraq, not just Baghdad, so it’s not as bad as it seems.

We got to wondering about the guy who did the story. He needed to talk to a general, and he needed to talk to someone keeping the stats. Who could say 70% of the deaths were coalition forces? How did they come up with that figure?


Who’s keeping score? A statistician! A person could go to Iraq, get stationed in Baghdad’s Green Zone, and keep stats on the war. A political appointee. A desk job. No house-to-house search missions like all those other poor, miserable, terrified sons and daughters of someone’s pact on America.

You’d have the figures on insurgent deaths, the civilian deaths, the US deaths, the accidental deaths, the friendly fire deaths, the percentages, how many guys pulled two tours, and all that other on and-off-the-record double-amputee post-humous stuff they never tell honestly and straightforward to the families or American public.

Like they say, you can get statistics to say anything you want them to say.

Senate Finance, Senate Armed Services Committee…Human Rights Watch...the UN...all other sorts of important people would be making evaluations and decisions, based upon your work. Elections could be swung, Saddam could be hung, nations could rise and fall…


And when he asked about the coffins, the general raised his finger to his lips and shook his head, mouthing the words, in a barely audible secret whisper, “Oh no, Son. We don’t say anything about the coffins.”

The reporter looked up slowly from his notes, mouth hanging open for a second, staring at the general, his pencil falling from his hand unconsciously and dropping on the desk.

“Are we winning?” he asked.

“Yes,” said the General.

“How can you tell?”

The General gazed out the window. “You can tell,” he said.

_____


As we headed north on Slim Buttes road toward Oglala, my passenger asked why I was driving on the left-hand side of the road.

“The road’s in better shape on this side.”

We drove in silence until we approached a small rise, and he asked, “What if there’s someone coming the other way?”

“There’s not,” I told him.

“How can you tell?” he asked.

I looked up the hill. Blue sky all around. “You can tell,” I told him.



- end

Detainee Dysfunctional Descent

Pine Ridge Indian Reservation - Lupe' entered the house, saying, "Brrrro, I'm back in the dog's house, again."

"That's, 'Dog House', Lupe'," I replied.

"Dog house, dog's house, whatever, it don't matter. I'm in it," he said. "My ol' lady kicked me out."

"Welcome to da club," I said. "You can pay your membership fees...to me."

Move over, Rover. Let Luuuupe' take over. Tom Ballanco, a fellow sun dancer who's taken the position of tribal attourney and is staying in 'Da Big House' here at the base farm, will have to make room.

Me, myself, as they say around here, I'm 'close by', back in my trailer, serving as a focal gathering point and crossroads for coffee, conversation, current reading material, computer land-link, communications, collaboration, chess, and corruption.

Land of concentrated despair and desolation, refugees and desperados. The frustration of dysfunction. Prisoners of war. No. Detainees.

Speaking of dysfunction, over in the tribal council building, everything is in upheaval, or limbo, which isn't all that unusual, seeing as how we still seem to operate in the stone age in many respects, like...this computer, for instance, or our roads, or our health care. Why should tribal government be any different?

Since Tom B. is living right here on the grounds, we get the inside track every night, Tom telling us Cecelia Fire Thunder, the tribe's first woman President, got impeached, removed from office, Alex White Plume, Vice-President, takes over, 4th of July, procedural challenge, more fireworks, no quorum, can't accomplish squat, court upholds challenge, Cecelia reinstated, Israelis invade Lebanon, Tiger Woods wins British Open, more later, stay tuned.

When I say, 'we', that would be the usual crew in the neighborhood; Tom Cook, his brother Louie, Milo Yellow Hair, Bo & Misty, Aloysius Weasel Bear, who just returned from upstate NY, Lupe', Manuel Martin, and me.

On Wednesdays and Sunday nights when we sweat, a whole 'nuther crew shows up on a regular basis; Uncle Joe American Horse, Virgil Goode, Virgil Jr; one or two or three of Misty's kid's, J.R. Afraid Of Bear, Jason Blind Man, and sometimes Adam and Justine. Sometimes Sal Lame. Plus any visitors or transients coming through. Sometimes Cash Jackson and Leroi Levers. Sometimes the ghost of Crazy Horse.


It's watermelon season, Dog Days on the rez, and coming out of lodge after midnight, steam rolling off our bodies, toweling off and coming up to the big house for watermelon is one of the things we look forward to throughout the year, especially during the winter months.

Hot here like everywhere else, the temperatures hovering around a hundred and five degrees, give or take five. Too hot for rattlers. Living on freezer pops. Ceremonies going on all over, Sun Dancing across the rez, people going 'up on the hill', the Vision Quest ('Hanblecheya', like the Sun Dance, four days and nights, no food or water. Or maybe two. Or maybe just overnight. Depends), and Native American Church peyote ceremonies going on.

And besides the ceremonies for reasons to get together, you got pow-wows and the rodeo circuit where lots of people dance, and young bucks see how long they can stay aboard a bucking bronc or two tons of solid, pissed off bovine muscle. There's money in it, they say, but only for awhile, only a matter of time before one of those animals punches your ticket.

Ask any retired cowboy or Indian bull rider if they remember the name of the bull that made 'em hang it up.

"OH YEAH! He didn't have no name, but I remember him. See this here? See that?"


Underneath the grandstand in the bulls' holding pen, the bulls are tense, wide-eyed and anxious, like any athlete, going over their pre-game plans, talking shit about their moves and what they're going to do when their moment in the arena arrives. Talk more shit than the NBA.

"I'm gonna kick that cowboy's ass!" says Yo' Mama, talking about Cody Weismuller, who's name he drew in the draw. "All over the arena!"

The bull's have reputations and rankings, too, you know. Some of 'em, as the cowboys say, "ain't never been rode." Well, they've ALL been rode. They just haven't been rode for eight seconds."

Mr. Bill said, "I'm coming out with a giant leap, do a hind leg double-kick in the air, spin and go down 'into the well', plant my front legs, get him coming forward, then come back up and knock his ass OUT! Then I'm going to launch his ass into the grandstands."

Nervously flexing his rippling muscles, Dynamo said, "I'm gonna let that cowboy ride for two, maybe three seconds, then I'm going to make him retire!"


Last month out at Alex White Plume's annual horse races in Manderson, two riders retired after they collided head-on in a dusty spectacular crunch that awed the onlookers and resulted in the the death of one of the horses, the other being shot, and an ambulance ride for one of the riders, who messed up his neck and back, his brother said later.

As Milo says jokingly, "I gave up bull-riding when they cut the time back to eight seconds."


And so, despite nothing going on on the reservation, there's still a lot of daily activity at tribal council, in and around Big Bat's Gas Station, where the main intersection of Pine Ridge Village has been torn up for two months, and Sioux Nation shopping center, where Bo bought those ropes that some folks at the dance were convinced was the problem with my breaking free from the tree.

"It's the rope," they kept saying. "That's like a bungee rope," they said.

I wasn't so sure, and neither was Bo. It didn't feel like it stretched much when I hit the end of it. "Im still gonna use mine," Bo said.

Last thing I told him after we jerked him to his feet and hooked him up, was, "Nail it the first time, Bro."

He did. So did David. Maybe it wasn't the rope after all. Maybe Bro Tom just pierced me deep. Maybe God had something to do with it.


Don't God have something to do with everything? Christie went up on the hill this year to have a talk with God. Four days and nights, watching the world go by without food or water, seeking the major hi-speed, clear channel download.

Before she went up, we were talking in Carl and Rita's kitchen, and she was talking about taking things down from the shelf, taking a look at them, and then, 'throwing it all away', letting go of it all.

I don't know what was in her jars, but it seems that there are some things we don't want to throw away, not that we should be attached to things, but some things, it seems, we need to carry through life. Say, lessons. Sometimes, maybe we should wear our wounds. Our scars are part of our undeniable load that decades of yoga or your personal rolfer can't undo.

And that thread wove itself right into another conversation down on the corner in Lyons, Colorado, where the remarried widow in the art shop said, "If it doesn't kill you, it'll make you stronger."

"That's a popular myth," I replied. "Tell that to a rape victim, a PTSD vet, or anyone that has suffered a trauma. Maybe it didn't kill them, but it sure didn't make them stronger. There are times when people are crippled for life, physically, emotionally, or otherwise."


Call it Karmic circumstance, but when it became apparent that it wasn't personal, that's when they closed up the monastery, heading out for the New World, wondering if God ever got lonely.

____

As a believer in self-fulling prophesy and spinning your own universe, I tried acting 'as if', just to see how people would react. It's like the mask we put on every day, only a different one, and sure enough, there was a discernable if not remarkable difference in the manner in which people responded. In fact, I felt entirely different about myself as a result, and so I took off the mask, and the face underneath was the same. The mask was inside out.

'As if', what? Wall Street tycoon? A Chinese businessman? The Dali Lama's protege'? In love? Walking the change you want in the world?

After we leave that arbor, they say, you've got a 361-day walk. "Did you get mad last year?" I asked a fellow sun dancer. His sideways glance was his only answer. Is it ever possible to conquer judgement, anger, self-righteousness, and all forms of negativity and self-delusion?

__

"You need to get out more," said Misty Sioux, laughing. "You ain't gonna meet no one way out here in the boonies."

"I do get out," I told her. "Where is there to go? The casino? Bingo? Jesus, Misty. I went clear around to the other side of the planet!"

She just laughed.


Everywhere, people on the move. Israelis moving into Lebanon, weaving karmic quilt and fabric, our National Guard moving from house to house in Baghdad, the Taliban on the move, Ethiopians on the move, refugees, people moving to one area or another, one job to another, one house to another, one relationship or marriage to another, one investment to another. One stage in life to another. Weigh the options.

What did our President say? We don't want no 'Cut and run'? 'Stay the course'? Cut your losses and walk away?

Thought about cutting my losses and walking away from this rez. Before I came home, Bro Tom told me in an email, "I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is someone broke into your trailer and took all your stuff. The good news is, your pipe's still there."

They took all my tools, ceremonial drum, Raven shield, wall hangings, artwork, money, all the CDs, an African drum, a 4-way lug wrench, handyman bumper jack, leatherworking tools, a coyote pelt, and drank the rubbing alcohol from the medical supplies, returning the empty bottle to its shelf.

I know who the terrorists are, but can't prove it. One of 'em was sitting on the drum (in the drum circle, 'in a sober phase,' said Tom) at our Sun Dance, and while dancing out there, I began thinking about praying for your enemies and that line about, 'forgive us our trespassers'. And then, from that standpoint, Jesus' or Buddha's or the preacher man's, that puts the onus back upon the head of the victim, don't it?

What about the perps? What do THEY have to do?

Someone causes injury, and it's up to their prey, the aggrieved, to forgive them. If you can't, then that's YOUR problem. You get nailed twice; once by the act, and then again for the guilt of non-forgiveness. That's the way of the Good Book, I think. Allah said an eye for an eye. Around here, a person might look for tire iron justice.

But tire iron justice is what's prevailing in the world, isn't it? Forgiveness, said the Lady in Lyons, is for ourselves, not for others. You've heard that before. If that's so, shouldn't we as a nation be of a forgiving heart to those guys who flew them planes into our buildings? What about John Walker Lyndh? Ready to forgive him yet?

___

Heading north out of Chadron toward the rez on one of the worst roads in America, up the washboard slope of jagged, tire-gnawing stone with the rez ahead, on that stretch of 'Writer's Road', where phrases, leads, structure, ideas and composition come percolating, bubbling, flooding to the surface, right after the meds were taking effect, right around a blind curve in the White River, there sat two Indian girls from Allen, way out on the other end of the rez, flat tire, dead in the water, middle of the day, one hundred and seven degree heat.

Two young kids and a baby in a van packed with shit from Wal-Mart. They had unpacked their scissor-jack and donut spare, out on the road.

Asked the obvious. "Whazzup?"

Hair soaked in perspiration from loosening the lug nets, she looked up and spoke the obvious. "We got a flat."



Yeah, they could send those detainees, the 'Gitmo Perps' from Guantanamo over here. Have 'em drive the roads, eat the food, suffer the isolation and neglect, be forgotten, and watch the world go by without food or water, dance in the sun.


- end

Back For The Dance

Back For The Dance


Slim Buttes, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation - Returned to the US for Sun Dance in 'The Canyon', the 'Holy Land', the Wild Horse Sanctuary south of Hot Springs, South Dakota. Hooked up with daughter Mia in Denver, Colorado and headed north, north to Slim Buttes, south of Oglala, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota, USA.

Right now, out here in the middle of nowhere, ten o'clock at night, coyotes are yelping down at the river. Otherwise it's quiet. Stone quiet.

We're right in the middle of Sun Dance season, with dances going on all around the reservation. People and their spiritual families coming together from all over for the once-a-year celebration and sacred ceremony that stands at the center of our lives and Native American spirituality.

Big dances with over a hundred dancers, small tiospaye (extended family) dances with only three; dances starting up and dances ending up. People out there today, no food, no water for four days of abstinence and fasting, dancing in 100 + degree heat, continuing to practice the ways of their ancestors. Tomorrow it'll be down to 96, they said.

Ours, the 9th annual Afraid-Of-Bear/American Horse Dance, went well, with four beautiful days of dancing and pitter patter rain on two nights to settle the dust. Couldn't have asked for more perfect weather. My prayer from the beach in Khuk Khak a month earlier got answered.

A few days before the dance, a bunch of us were hanging out, and someone, I think it was Bo or Misty, said, "I sure hope we get good weather...no rain, and not too hot."

"I've already put in the request," I said. "Last month. No problem. It's covered. I asked Him again last night in sweat (purification ceremony. a regular, twice-a-week function here at the 'base farm') and he told me, "What's the matter? Don't you have no faith?* I heard you the first time! Don't bother me again! ......I'm a busy man."


And that got me to thinking about prayer, in general, and asking for the same thing, over and over. You know? Seeut ahm sayin'? You're out there for four days, all day long, praying, and... gee, I'm usually done with all my prayers after about the second round on the first day!

Like Tom, our lead dancer once joked on Day Two, "I've made all my prayers. Whaddaya say you and me go to town for some breakfast?"

I shared with our sun dancing Catholic priest, Father Paul, and disclosed to a few others that I'm not praying all the time out there in the arbor. I mean, there's a LOT of choreography to pay attention to...and sometimes, much of the time in fact, I'm just being quiet and let my dance be my prayer, mostly just a prayer of thanksgiving. Besides, I told him, God knew.

Sitting under the the shade at the end of the day, Father Paul quoted me something from scripture, and said something to the effect of, "That's okay. We've got to be quiet to receive the Lord's message," and something about an empty vessel and meditative state.

I can't remember what all he actually said, because my mind wandered and I was more or less distilling down his affirmation of my approach, you know, being a priest 'n all. Wanted to know what a priest thought. Spent his whole life, practically, in the church.

I also asked him about Christ's virgin birth.

"If you believe what Matthew said," he replied. "Matthew said that Mary was conceived by Spirit."

And then I asked him if he believed Christ died on the cross for his sins.

"Mine and everybody's," he said. "Christ died for my sins, personally, and everybody's."

"Do you think what we're doing out there makes a difference?" I asked.

"All prayer makes a difference," he replied.

"Do we need to do this voluntary suffering? Does voluntary suffering make a difference in the strength of one's prayer?"

I can't remember exactly what he said, but essentially, he said yes, concentrated prayer through voluntary suffering makes a difference in the world. Apart from all the personal prayers that we all brought to the dance this year, our Main Prayer and focus was upon world peace. So far, given what's going on in the world, it seems not to have taken effect.

"Do you believe in reincarnation?" I asked.

"What are you trying to do?" he said, laughing. "Shake my faith? No. We believe in purgatory."

"I'm just trying to find out where you come down on these issues," I said. "Can a person get to heaven just by being a good person without going through Christ?"

"Yes," he replied. "But the spiritual body of Christ is big. It encompasses everything. You can't help but pass through his body."

That might not be the exact quote. Forgive me, Paul, but I think that's what he said. Same same Buddha, right? As Bro Tom likes to say when making up quotes for official use in official documents, "That's what he would've said if he would've said it."


It was last year, Father Paul dancing between Lou and me, red and sun burnt, stepping sluggishly, spittle on his lips from the eagle bone whistle, the drum a distant pounding in his ears, I could tell. Maybe he was having a vision.

"Keep an eye on him," Basil, our intercessor, the medicine man, had cautioned Lou and I as we entered the arbor to begin the round (round of dancing. several throughout the day, after sweat in the morning, after the singers show up from breakfast, and after they return from lunch, throughout the afternoon. a round can be short, around 40 minutes, or long, for more than a couple of hours if there are people piercing).

I looked over at Paul, and then at Lou. Lou felt my gaze and slowly turned his head, caught my eyes, glanced at Paul, looked back at me, and we both moved in unison, taking him by his sage wristlets, telling him we were going to lead him out of the arbor.

He looked up dazed, and thanked us.

And we thanked him, too, as we are thankful for all our elders. Uncle Vern American Horse, our intercessor this year, who jokingly told Tom, "You go ahead and do everything. I'm just going to sit here under the shade. If you want me to run things, I'd change everything all around."

That kind of good-natured humor around the dance kept everything light and lively, and not heavy, restrictive, and oppressive, as can sometimes be the case.

And Uncle Joe American Horse, Vern's younger brother, running around all over camp, can't sit down. Besides the elders and our young people, the rest of us are all worker bees. That's one of the things I like about the culture. Kids running around playing, and the old folks sitting in the shade.

____

We started out with about 35 dancers, and ended up on day four with 43. Probably about two hundred people in camp. 'Supporters,' we call 'em. Can't dance without 'em.

There were lots of young people out there the the arbor with us this year; Devon, who started dancing with us when he was eight, was finishing up a four-year commitment, getting good grades, he said, out there dancing with his father and grandfather.

And Cory, also finishing up four years of dancing, joining us as a twelve-year old couch potato, and now, at sixteen, stretched out into a fine young man any coach would like to get ahold of. Cory, peach fuzz for a moustache, out there dancing alongside his dad and Inchamuk, who at 87 years old, was advised not to dance all four days this year. Just a couple of rounds. He was thrilled to be dancing with his daughter, his son, his son-in-law, and his grandson.

"I couldn't be happier," he told Tom gratefully. "These are some of the best days of my life."

And for the round he danced, out there alongside his family, all painted red to protect him from the sun, the old man was obviously enjoying himself, high-stepping to the drum, arms up in the air like a marionette, dancing with irrepressible exuberance that picked us all up.

There was Raymondo, now in high school, dancing with us all nine years, since he was seven. And Ohitika Red Cloud, a big barrel-chested, commod bod (commodities-constructed body)teenager, dancing his first year, going around camp loudly squawking his 'eagle call', his 'warrior's call', he called it, that sounded more like...I don't know...a loud squawk.

His mother, Germaine, had asked me to keep an eye on him. Didn't need to. He was one of the strongest dancers out there. Every time I checked, Ohi was doing fine. Even under the scalpel, he didn't flinch. I was fortunate to assist his uncle Tim, who Ohi wanted to do his piercing, and halfway through the first cutting, which was going badly for Tim, like he didn't want to cut his nephew, he extracted the knife and held it out to me, saying, "Here. You do it."

I'd never pierced anyone before, but for a number of years I'd helped Tom, who has good technique. It wasn't a time for vacillation. The drum was going, he was laying there on the buffalo robe with the whole Red Cloud clan gathered around, everyone in, under, and around the arbor praying for him. A rather suspenseful moment that was all his. His and the Creator's.

Took the knife, asked God for guidance, and went ahead and did it. Inserted his pins and yanked him to his feet. Everybody hollered out big war whoops, we hooked him up to his rope, and he went out and made the offering for his family as a first-time sun dancer. A teenager. Out of all the teenagers in the world, out of all the teenage Indians on the rez, out of all the men in his family, he was out there, doing this. He made us all proud.

His parent's gave him that name, Ohitika (Oh-hee-tee-ka). It means 'brave'. Brave, indeed.


Giving us encouragement for the future, there were lots of father/son dancers. In addition to those mentioned above, there was Kakwira, in from Hawaii, dancing with his father and mother, Bro Tom and Sister Loretta. And Norman Afraid Of Bear, teen grandson of our late spiritual leader, Ernest Afraid Of Bear, dancing with his father, Poncho.

Father Paul, who had danced with us for three or four years, sat out this year at 85, also being advised not to stress himself out like that. But he was with us, nonetheless, sleeping in the men's 28 ft. tipi, hanging out under the arbor, and sitting right outside the lodge during sweat each morning and evening, drinking the water right along with us.

"Is it okay if I just call you 'Paul'? I had asked him a few years ago. "I only have two fathers - our heavenly father, and the man who raised me up. I'm not a Catholic."

In a reply that began as a stutter, then spilled out rapidly, he said, "I...I...I'd rather be known as a Sun Dance Brother, than as a priest."

And Beatrice, Loretta's mom and the family matriarch medicine woman who I probably should've mentioned at the top, at 87-years old, out there dancing with us all four days.

Remembering what Jose' had mentioned to the men in sweat one morning about our elderly not thinking five years on down the road, but rather, just the next year in front of them, I shook her hand at the end of the dance, thanked her for being out there with us, and told her I sure hoped she be out there next year, too.

"Thank you," she said sincerely. "I hope so, too."



* The Lakota God, Tunkashila, uses double negatives.


- end



the following personal experience account of the dance was previously published as an emailing. Some readers may have already received it.


wow ! my hair is standing up and i was cringing when i read this...just took a deep breath.
-------------- Original message from victor glover : --------------


Like I said, the American Horse/Afraid Of Bear sun dance in the canyon went quite well, except for Day One when it appeared that everybody but me got the message to line up for entry. I didn't hear no eagle bird whistle, no drum, no 'Hoka Hey!', nuthin' until they started hitting the drum for entry.

Being about the fifth person back, behind Uncle Vern American Horse, who led us, then Kakwira with the buffalo skull, then Tom, then Lou, I had to race past all the women and almost all of the men to my position. Caught up with the procession by the time they were praying to the north.

Nice way to start the dance, huh? Late for the first round, first day. Nice way for a veteran dancer to show everyone that any one of us human beings can fuck up.

Well, there's both advantages and disadvantages to camping in a pup tent by yourself.

______

Mia informed me that maybe nature would preclude her being able to attend the last three days of the dance, so if I wanted her there with me in the arbor, I'd better pierce on Day One.

"That's cool, Honey," I told her. "It's Father's Day, and I want to relieve the logjam on the last day, anyway."

No problem. Lou, Roy, a few other old-timers and I had routinely pierced on day two every year for the same reason; a half dozen people piercing on the same round on the last day makes for some terribly long rounds, and that's a long time for Loretta to be kneeling at the tree.

But this was the first time I'd ever pierced on the first day, and the first time I'd been the very first dancer to pierce. "Good," someone said. "Set the pace, Bro."

It was Pure Bliss on the buffalo robe. Father's Day. Mia was there, squeezing my hand. Didn't feel a thing.

Didn't feel a thing until I went to break and hit the end of that rope. WHANGGGG! Didn't get free.

Returned to the tree, coiling up my rope and thinking, 'I'll have to hit it harder,' when Tom looked over, saw my look of discouragement, and said matter-of-factly and almost apologetically, 'I had to go deep, Bro. Your pins were thick.'

The day prior to the dance, Bo and I were in Sioux Nation getting last-minute things we'd need for the dance. "Let's add some color to the tree this year," he said, selecting a blue, green, and yellow plastic-coated climbing rope for himself, me, and David Watters, it turned out.

While at the tree, I saw a close-up of their faces in my mind, dancing out there, serious lines of concern etched across their foreheads. They were using the same type of rope, instead of the usual hemp or cheap, Wally World 1/4 inch sissal twine that every other Indian in the world uses.

Snapping me out of it, Tom asked, "You want some help, Bro?"

"Nah," I said, shaking my head. "I'll do it this time."

Went up to the tree and told God whatever it was he had planned for me was okay with me, but I'd really like to get free this time. Went flying back again, really gonna get free.

Hit the end of the rope and came to a sudden jarring stop, the tree bending toward me, then springing back, pulling me with it, up onto my tiptoes. Tell Laura it's like having meathooks in her tits and free-falling off a bridge on a rope that's ten feet shorter than the ground.

Lou and Roy, who I'd earlier asked to stand behind me, grabbed me under the armpits and yanked me backwards, asking, "You want us to rip you free, Bro?"

The free part sounded good, but as they began to do so, the skin on my chest stretched out to where I could no longer ignore it in my field of vision, and I think I said, "NO! NO! NO! PUTMEDOWN! PUTMEDOWN!"

Like at any time in our perceptual world, there are things within our field of awareness, and much more outside. The drum got muffled and quite. The people got quiet, and it seemed like everybody quit singing and praying. Couldn't see anything in my blurred tunnel vision except the tree and that blue rope connecting me to it.

Everything inside my head...all those voices...became muffled and quiet, too. I distinctly remember having an intimate, focused, one-on-one conversation with God, asking, "This ain't going to be another one of those forty-minute, seven-trips-to-the-tree afternoons, is it? How long you gonna keep me out here on the end of this rope?'

"I'm sorry," I said. "I know I shouldn't talk to you like that, but you know how I feel. You know I'm your impatient pitiful servant. You know I love you. Could you pllllease let me go this time? That last one HURT!"

Went flying back again, this time growling and gritting my teeth, fighting back tears, I think. Hit the end of the rope and vaguely remember hands clutching at me, pulling, Brother Tom throwing what they said was a body block into me, a ripping at my chest, a snapping, the rope, harness and pins slingshotting into the upper branches of the tree, leaves scattering, all of us in a tumble, being caught by more hands, Lou and Roy around front, quicking looking at my chest, joy on their faces, laughing, telling me I was free, Mia at my side, taking my wristlet, leading me in a joyous lap around the arbor, sailing. Floating.

Father's Day. Pure Bliss.


Of course, there was much, much more to the dance, but that was how it went for me, personally. Thanks for asking.

vic


- end

Manat Nixes Marriage Designs

Manat Nixes Marriage Designs


Khuk Khak, Thailand - According to the fortune teller in Bangkok back in January, I was supposed to meet my new wife within the next few weeks, and get married. Digger and Mel were there. I got witnesses.

A Thai woman, he said, but not necessarily so, so I was really keeping my eyes peeled in understandable expectation and joyful anticipation. Staying on the lookout, keeping a 'heads up', staying on my toes, shaving every day, attending to nose hairs.

Well, it didn't happen. Had to go back and check my fortune teller notes for a clarification. When, did he say?

Among chiefs and sun dancers, widows and orphans first, they say, so maybe it could've been one of the widow ladies. Pen, who lost her husband last year, showed up at the dinner party with a new dude, so I figured it couldn't be her, nor P' Su*, who gave me my Thai name, 'P. Yai',** and whom I had befriended last year after she and her husband, P' Ton, were involved in a head-on traffic mishap with a truck while traveling down the mountain from the former Volunteer Center site.

P' Ton was trapped in the vehicle, pinned up under the steering wheel and dash, and I really didn't do much but give him water, check his pulse, check for injuries, and stay with him until real, practising, licensed medical personnel arrived on the scene.

With the help of a log chain, a pickup truck, and about thirty hollering Thai men, P' Ton was eventually freed from his smashed van, and the next day, he greeted me, showing me his bruised legs, and later that weekend at a cookout, he invited me to join his table, that was later disrupted by Eileen, the drunken Scottish woman who overturned the table and ended up in the hospital before being deported.

That was about the extent of it, until I learned upon my return to 'The Land Of Smiles' that P' Ton had died of a heart attack over the summer, and P' Su invited some of us old-timers from the TVC (the vol. ctr.) to attend his 100-day memorial at P' Ton's mother's house way out in the sticks.

Since then, I'd stop at the relocated, down-from-the-mountaintop Vol. Ctr. in Khao Lak to see P' Su, who operates a small Thai restaurant and speaks only Thai, and 'Canadian Karen', the English teacher (as opposed to 'Craftshop Karen' [from England]), the only two people I knew from the early post-tsunami days, besides Tilo, who finally went back home to Colorado after over a year of tsunami relief work and losing all his body fat.

So, I kept keeping my eyes peeled, expecting my new wife to surface at ANY TIME, NOW. There was this other lady...two of 'em, in fact, both Chinese, who were my girlfriends; one, the Bamboo Lady, in her mid-thirties, and the other twenty-nine; only thing was, they didn't know it.

And besides them not knowing it, one of 'em was married (I didn't have no designs on her, I just liked the way she said, like she was hurt, "Mr. Wic. I bring bamboo to your ban. Mr. Wic no hab," meaning, she brought a bamboo chair to my house and I wasn't home), and the other one had a boyfriend in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong was too close for a serious plan, but far enough away for me and Choi, disguised as production assistants, to casually crash a British movie production company seaside dinner party at a five-star hotel on a Saturday night. Good wine, steamed vegetables, and smoked Salmon. Just look and act like you belong there; a little arrogant, a little pompous, a little annoyed with something.

So I kept going into Manat's Honda shop just to see the smile on the face of his receptionist. I never did get her name, but that girl's smile lit up the whole showroom...an iridescent, beaming, irresistable, indescribable smile.

After about the third or fourth trip in there, I felt like I should buy something...a helmet? A decal? It was a Honda shop, right? Manat sold me a tsunami bike, fully broken down and restored, at a very reasonable price, free maintenance included, an offer I couldn't refuse, a better price and 25 CCs more than my monthly rental. Only thing I had to pay for was the oil and the 1,000 kilometer checkups.

After about the third checkup, I finally got up the gumption to ask her to marry me. Went right up to her desk, smiled, and when she recognized me and smiled back, I asked her.

'Will you marry me?'

Can you fall in love with just a smile? Never mind the insurmountable language, race, age and cultural crevasses. You can smile your way across those minor things.

She smiled and gave me a look of incomprehension, since she was from Takuapa and didn't speak a lick of English. I went on with my usual business with Manat, who always had one of his staff serve up coffee and cookies while we chatted for a half hour or so, about this and that and his daughter Toey's TOEFL scores, which should have improved after the English tutoring sessions, but didn't, leaving me feeling like a failure as a tutor and unworthy of the 1,000 Baht per lesson he paid, not to mention the free lunches and mangoes, nor the case of Singha and three bottles of wine he sent for the dinner party.

The third time I asked her...well, the second time I asked her, she gave me the same look of befuddlement, and the third time I asked her, Manat was standing right there, and someone must've told her what I was saying, because her face flushed red and she glanced away, shyly.

"She's got three kids," said Manat, laughing. "Her husband is a cop in Takuapa."



So, I guess that's that.


_____

* P' Su, who always feeds me for free and gave me a special amulet of the King, right before my planned return to the U.S., asked me, and I don't know how she did, since neither of us knows the other's language, but she asked me to take her someplace on the bike...out to her mother-in-law's house, I think, about 25 kilometers to the south. At five o'clock. I told her I would. She said her boyfriend's mom told her son that she, P' Su wasn't good for him since she had two small children.

"Finished," she said, angrily, her eyes welling with tears. So I figured I wouldn't be intruding on anyone's toes when she hopped on the back of the bike and we headed out.

We needed to make a stop, she indicated by pointing, just south of Lam Kem, the next town south of Khao Lak, where we stopped to get her sister-in-law, it must've been, and after the two of them collected some greens for a tea for P' Ton's mother's arthritis, from what I could gather, there we went, with those two Thai girls (I'm not so sure that P' Su is Thai, with her sharp features and bracelets and bangles and all. The Thai are much more round and soft-featured. And those CDs she had were from India. She could be from India, maybe Nepal. I really don't know) on the back of my bike, about 25 k. per hour, the tire nearly flat, knees aching all the hell of the way south on an hour/plus ride to P. Ton's mother's house out in the sticks.

Fortunately, P' Su had her motorbike there, and after about an hour there on P' Ton's mother's porch, she and her sister-in-law rode together on the way back, their tire going flat after about five kilometers, delaying us for another hour in a small village. We dropped off her sister-in-law back in Lam Kem, and when we got back to P. Sue's shop in Khao Lak, her boyfriend was sitting there waiting.

So I guess that's that.

_____


**'Mr. Big', literally, but after several months, I learned that culturally, it means, 'Big Brother'.

So I guess that's that.


The fortune tellers have a spot on the eastern end of the Pranam Phalong or whatever it is they call the big parade and ceremonial grounds adjacent to the Royal Palace in Bangkok. That's where I saw that guy two days in a row, and where he gave me my 'new wife in nine weeks' reading. I looked for him when I returned to the capital. He wasn't around.



-end

Seeking The Whole Nautilus

Seeking The Whole Nautilus

May have told you I was doing some landscaping consulting down here. After all this new post-tsunami reconstruction, what comes next? Landscaping, right?

Digger and Mel put in a bunch of new plants around their front porch, and when I rode up on my motorbike, they asked me what I thought. 'Looks good,' I told them.

Two doors down, Michael, recently returned from Sweden, and his Thai wife, Pom, put in new plants around their new fish ponds and asked, 'How do you like?'

'Looks good,' I told them.

Michael is also officially the owner of Bovi, who has now bitten ten people, according to Michael, who tends to tell the same story three of four times in a sitting, and each time he sees you.

"I tell them, 'He not my dog, but they say 'you feed him,' but I tell them I feed all da dogs, and they not belong me. I feed da cats, and they not belong me. I feed the Thai people also, and they not belong me,' hey?" he said, nodding his head as if to ask me if he was making sense.

"They tell me, 'He your dog. He sleep in your house'," said Michael, shrugging his shoulders with a look of resignation, like, 'What can I say to that?'

"So, I guess he my dog," he continued, followed by a vignette I'd already heard sixteen times. "He come here puppy after tsunami," he said, showing me with his hands how small the dog was. "He choose me. I not choose him. I feed him, and he stay. He only survivor of all dogs here. Before tsunami, he never make with anybody. Now, he make shit with everybody who come by."

As he told the story, a Thai man and his son rode by on bicycles, the little boy trailing a few meters behind his dad. Bovi, in the street at the time, began to make a move on the little boy. Michael shouted out, "BOVI! MAI!" and the little boy, watching Bovi all the while, screamed out in mortal terror.

Bovi eased up after making three or four stiff-legged aggressive steps after the kid, smiled, and returned to the yard, relaxing his muscles, lowering his ears, wiping the smile off his face, and glancing up sheepishly at Michael, who was giving him a tongue-lashing in Swedish.

The guys sitting on their porch across the street chuckled, and another Thai man, sauntering down the street, smiled and shook his head as Bovi left the yard and approached him, wagging his tail.

"He likes that guy," I said.

"He likes some people," said Michael. "Other people, he don't like."

Just then another motorbiker came by, the man lifting his feet off the foot pegs and onto the frame, gunning his motor as Bovi chased him down the street, Michael screaming, 'BOVI! MAI!" and Bovi ignoring him.

"That guy," said Michael, nodding his head in the direction of the biker, "he don't like."

____

When just arriving or just about to depart, don't you like to pay one last visit to your 'favorite spot', a place where there are no footprints, nothing to disturb your thoughts, and only the sounds of nature?


The other day, while walking the beach up around the Cape, I saw a piece of coral that looked "just like a chicken's foot," I told Digger.

After a few moments, he replied, "A chicken's foot? There's only about a million or so of those. You see them all the time."

"...and another piece that looked just like a brain."

He just laughed and shook his head. "You must've been up around the Cape."

"...and another piece of coral that looked juuuust like a cloud."


So, we look selectively for the perfect specimens, bypassing by all those fragmented or common shells, like Augers, Cones, Olives, and Arabian Cowries, and all that stuff collected by the tourists who are here for just a few days.

I've seen only three Nautilus shells, but they were all broken and much less than complete. The Nautilus, very rare, a cephalopod, found in the tropical Indian Ocean and Western Pacific. A weird, tenacled creature when occupying it's chambered shell, unchanged in 500 million years of evolution. I sure hope you and me don't take that long.

So, the Nautilus, or the piece of coral in the perfect shape of a heart, the 'cardium cardissa' or heart cockle, or something else unsual that might catch the eye in an early morning stroll down the beach before sunrise.

And then, washed up by last evening's high tide, there was that big piece of coral that looked just like a human skeleton; skull, rib cage, the pelvis, the whole bit, about the size of a German. The tide left it looking funny, as if it had dragged itself ashore. At first, I was shocked by the uncanny resemblance, teeth and all, on a piece of coral like none I'd previously ever seen. I approached it and said, 'People been looking for you.'

I thought it would look good propped up against one of my palm trees, legs crossed, kicked back, maybe holding a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other. Maybe grinning, mouth agape, holding up a tiny roach. I could see it, couldn't you? like that skeleton on the rez that Misty said had the house burn down around it, and they found it sitting there on the charred springs of a stuffed chair, holding a beer.

The only way I could get it home was to drag it up the beach and strap it onto my motorbike, on the back, with it's feet on the foot pegs and securing it in place with a bungee strap around my waist. I draped the arms over my shoulders and let the chin rest on my back, reminding me of how the Japanese girl, Lulu, used to ride over the mountain to work at the volunteer center last year, hitching a ride from the jungalows. She'd put her chin right on my shoulder blade, and I always wanted to ask her, 'Is that the way they ride in Japan?' but never did.

But Lulu was very small, and this piece of coral was quite large, like I said, about the size of a German, although not as rigid. In fact, it was flexible enough for me to ride quite comfortably, which I normally can't do with someone on the back, because of my knees.

About a mile from the house, I turned and asked it, 'How you doing back there?' and I couldn't get home quick enough because the early-morning traffic was getting heavy, and people were staring. I felt somewhat self-conscious and embarrassed as they looked at me, laughing by myself as I rode down the road.

The Laundry Girl and the chicken-on-a-stick lady, and the people at the shoe shop all told me they saw me driving down the road with a skeleton on the back of my bike, and I had to tell them, laughing, 'No. That was a piece of coral.'



end

Slicing Through The Ectoplasm

Slicing Through The Ectoplasm

5/5/06

Khuk Khak, Thailand - On the beach of the Andaman Sea in timeless monotony, one wave rolls beneath the next, crashing behind another; one day bleeds into the next, one lifetime rolls onto another. A generation, then another. What is gained? What is lost? Want to know the future? What happened yesterday? Check the DNA. Today, what did Earth spin into motion?

And for how long have those Sea Turtles dragged themselves ashore to lay their eggs?

___

5/10/06

The drive north on motorbike to Takuapa ('Tah-koo-uh-pa') seems longer than it really is, a mere 25 kilometers, a half-hour ride, a lifetime aboard a Honda. North of Cape Pakarang, approaching Bangsak Beach, the air beneath a cool, tunneled patina canopy of jungle is thick and lava lamp gelatin, the road lined with orange blossoms, surreal, dreamy, and two dimensional.

Slicing through the ectoplasm aboard a Honda Wave, skin and sense of self stretching deep into the jungle, entering a timeless dimension of amorphous being.

___

5/12/06

They say it's good luck to see a cobra, and the Thai will even chase them, getting them to stop, coil, and fan out its unmistakable hood. So it was good luck, I suppose, to see that cobra exiting the garden, headed for the jungle. I didn't chase him, but thought of what Milo had said about that rattlesnake under my cabin on the reservation.

"You've created the perfect environment for a snake," he said. "Water, mice, birds."

On the television set, the ten-year old son of a Thai snake charmer played with a cobra, squatting, constantly moving his knees, hands, arms, swaying his head before the confused and undulating reptile, poking the snake's chest (if a snake has a chest), up in the snake's face in a stare-down contest, the cobra flicking its forked tongue, until the cobra finally struck, and the kid, practiced enough to anticipate the snake's attack, would quickly leap or lean back, just milimeters from the snake's deadly fangs. Quite a spellbinding show.

But once, the snake got him, right on the nose. The father and somebody else, maybe a grandfather or a medicine man, jumped up quickly, pulled the snake from the kid's nose, and immediately applied a paste. The studio audience gasped, and then applauded. Quite a show.

________

5/20/06

Just east across the quickly-filling reservoir, the Wat Komaneeyakhet, a vast, manicured complex of buildings, the school, the Temple, monks' dwellings, administrative facilities, open-air pavilions and dining rooms, they're getting a new swimming pool and tennis courts.

The Wat is getting a complete make-over, including a big opening ceremony a few months back for, I think, the completion of the entry-way arch at the highway, a beautiful, ornate, relief work of mostly gold and lots of other colors, all executed in Siamese style that you can sit and look at for a long time.

Three or four dozen men and women Thai workers have been busy over there for months, and after wondering for a long time just what it was they were building, along with the new long, two-story classroom buildings, and new monk's quarters, it looks like, finishing touches are being completed on the pool and courts.

It's probably for the school kids and not the resident monks. If it's for the monks, I'd like to get a shot of monks playing tennis in flip flops and saphron robes.


Went over there (to the Wat) the other night at the invitation of my students, who informed me that they (the resident monks) were having a Vientien ceremony, a lighting of the candles ceremony, there under the full moon.

One of my students said it was Buddha's awakening, but then they said it was candles. Same student said we shouldn't kill the mosquito in the temple when I brushed one away. Then, one of the monk's assistants, a local layman dressed in white, an adherent or something, was standing talking with another of the students, and reached up and slapped a mosquito on his forehead.

"What about that?" I asked. "He just killed a mosquito."

"Reflex," said my student, grinning.


Lizards, frogs, sa-corpions and sa-nakes. And the ever-present-in-the-evening mosquitos here are like the three rounds (bullets) between tracers - it's the ones you don't see that get you.

In a huge open-air pavillion with a stage occupied by six or seven resident monks in front of an enormous buddha, much of the evening's hour-long repeat-after-me chanting, prayer, and amplified teaching ceremony went right past me for two reasons; the mosquitos around my ankles kept me fidgeting and divided my attention, and the whole thing was in Thai. After the half-hour discourse/teaching/dharma talk, I leaned over to ask the Laundry Girl, "whud he say?" and she said, 'Uh..." whispering, "I'll tell you later."

"Something about Buddha, wasn't it?" I asked.

Perhaps she didn't understand the humor.* If so, perhaps it wasn't appropriate for me at that moment to be cracking a joke.

_____

* The genesis of this joke relates back fifteen years or so ago with Uncle Larue, Joseph Afraid Of Bear, who spoke (rarely) at length (in Lakota) during purification ceremony on the Cheyenne River in South Dakota, south of Hot Springs. Outside afterward, around the fire, I asked, "Whud he say?"

After a short silence, allowing elders Ernest and Uncle Joe time to respond, Brother Tom, it was, blurted out, "He said something about God."

________

5/20/06

Pen, the local lady who spends the rainy season in France with her husband, and arranged for the English classes to be taught in the Khuk Khak community building, was showing Mel the classroom when the village chief was testing the new tsunami warning system over loud speakers set up throughout the village. The old man's voice croaked out throughout the community, sounding something like, 'Testing...testing...nuong...song...sam...nuong...song...nuong..song...sam.'

"Do you have a siren or taped message to play in the event of a tsunami?" asked Mel.

"No," replied Pen. "We just get on the speaker and yell, "EVERYBODY! 'RUN! RUN! RUN!' "

______

5/25/26

Love Our Gas, Do Anything For It

Down at the 'petrol gah-rrahge', as Mel says, the gas is only about fifty cents a litre, and that can run a Honda for about a week - you might have to go back on Thursday for another fifty cents worth. Relatively speaking, that seems like pocket change for transportation, recalling how my last trip from S. Dakota to Denver exceeded two hundred dollars, US., one way.

Wudden on a Honda, wuzzit?
______

Motorbike Culture

But then, where do you have to go? In Saharut Amereeka, as they call us, we go EVERYwhere in our cars. Go to work in our cars, go to play in our cars, pick up the groceries, the kids, the laundry, go to the corner in our cars. Gotta have a car. A drive-by wouldn't be a drive-by without a car. Over here, a drive-by means, 'on a honda' .

Among other wild-ass ideas that never got off the ground, I was thinking of instituting the drive-by funeral parlor, where you could , you know, give your last respects at a drive-up window, something someone like Bryan could really appreciate. Church service, the same way. All in the comfort of your car .

Most people here are too poor to own a car, thusly, about ninety percent of the population is on motorbikes, just about anywhere you go in Asia. That's the good news? Bad news is, more people are buying cars.


So you'll see whole families aboard a bike, already told you, no helmets, everybody wearing flip-flops. Things you'd find appalling in other countries, such as the much-practiced art of propping your infant child on the seat in front of you if they're too young to stand on the seat and hold onto the mirrors. Baby can't even hold its head up. If they're three or four, they can stand on the frame and hold onto the mirror posts.

And there's a strange sort of pride you'll see in the eyes of a mother as she goes down the road with her ten-month old, can't walk yet, but old enough to stand and ride.

And before they're old enough to stand and ride, they've got a custom-made wicker child's seat designed especially to fit over the frame of a motorbike. They sell 'em in the shops, a kind of a little high chair. Most of the time, the kids don't seem to be enjoying the ride, dirt in their eyes.

Most of the time, they seem to be quite terrified, as if they know their lives are in extreme danger. It's the parents who are smiling. They've got the kid as a shield.

____

"Tttttttthat's a lance," said the stork from Amsterdam, who probably wouldn't like knowing he was refered to as such. "Ttttttttthat's madness," he said as I began to exit the lumber yard with three fifteen-foot lengths of bamboo for my thatch roof. "Why don't you let me deliver that for you," he said, nodding at his truck.

"It's not mad," I replied. "Everybody does it. Haven't you seen some of the loads people carry on a bike?"

"IIIIIIIIIIIII knowwww," he said, with a hint of whiny exasperation that I wondered was a cultural thing with the Dutch, "bbbbbbbbut tttttttthat stilldoesn'tmakeitnot mmmmmad."

"Ok," I finally said, taking him up on his offer after trying to balance the poles on takeoff and striking the rear quarter panel of his truck, him watching me all the while.

He also offered me advice on which thatch to buy. The ones that rotted.


________

end

The Shop Comes To You

The Shop Comes To You

Khuk Khak, Phang Nga, Thailand - If you wait long enough, they say, eventually, everything will come to you. That's what they say. One might wonder if they're just talking about 'things', or Karma, or love, or money, or what.

Over here, if you sit at home long enough, everything will eventually come to you. There are vendors of every sort, and they'll bring everything to your door, in the manner of the Fuller brush salesman and the milkman, for those who can remember the milkman, or the fishman. But that was back in the day, long before Mrs. Sweeney's Microwavable Frozen Square Fish Bricks.
___

"You and I are going to become very good friends," I said to the ice cream (that's 'Isa-Kareem') vendor when he jingled his way past my house, looked up, saw me looking back at him, then swung into the empty lot beside my house where everyone in town, it seems, comes to view from a panoramic vista, the continuing dredging work on the ever-expanding reservoir that will someday export water to the villages of Khuk Khak, Bang Niang, and Khao Lak.

That's one long-ass sentence, inna?

Besides selling me a drumstick, he dismounted his three-wheeled motor chariot to check out my newly-installed thatched roof over the back patio, suggesting reinforcement for the monsoon winds that will otherwise blow it away if left it in its current, what I had previously thought was finished, state.

And Yahn, who seems to stop by every day, and whom it seems, doesn't have a working job, has said on three or four occasions that the pitch needs to be increased to shed the water. Otherwise, it'll mildew and eventually rot.

But did I listen to either one of them?

Nah.

The first big wind presented an idea of what the isa kareem man was talking about, and a few weeks later, after several rains, when the whole business began to mildew from trapped water, it became apparent what Yahn was telling me, and I realized that maybe these Thai might know something about living in the tropics.

_______

Mr. Gui, who runs the big hardware store in Bang Niang, said a good one the other day when I was trying to explain to him the high mountains of Colorado. 'Much snow', I told him.

"Ahhhhh," he said. "Sah-No."

"Yeah," I said, making the motions of a downhill skier. "Sah-Kee."

Yeah, downhill sah-keeing on the sah-lopes.

___

"Repeat after me," I told the three-times-a-week English class of a dozen adults above the Khuk Khak shoe shop. "Slllllleeep."

"SAH-LEEEEEP."

"Let's try again. Sllllllllllllleeeep."

"SAH-LEEEEEEEP."

_________

They gave me a name over here last year that I took a long time to figure out what everyone was calling me.

'P' Yai.'

The 'P' is an honorific title, and I knew 'Yai' meant 'big', so I naturally assumed they were calling me 'Mr. Big', either because of my XL American size, or maybe because they had somehow heard of who I almost could've been, back home in my own country. Who knows? Someone could've said something.

'Don't you know who he almost could've been?'

Wonderful line, inna? Came from the reservation, 1998, relatively recent. Along with, 'Be your own damn nigger,' spoken with the emphasis on 'own', as would an aging southern Black grandmother, sah-peaking to her grandson.

The quote, now moving rapidly toward both coasts from S. Dakota, arose while ditch-digging one day, laying a new copper water pipe to replace the plastic one that wasn't worth a shit to begin with, and had been punctured repeatedly by gophers, playing a mind-game with Brother Tom, who insisted the gophers were 'against' him, and that yes, he was out there yet another day, another time, attempting to 'defeat' the gophers. Happened six or seven times before we dug up the whole damn thing and replaced it with copper.

If my memory serves me correctly, which I have learned lately that it often does not, I told the crew at the time, "When my momma see-int me off to schoo, she told me, 'Boy, you ain't nevva gon' haf' to do fiel nigguh work again. Evva.' "

But here it was, some thirty seben eleben years behine what she said, and there I was, right along with Bo and Manuel and Lupe' and that other guy who left after one day, doing field nigger work that I thought I had left a longgg-ass time behind me, in graduate school, at least.

That was back in the day, before Manny approached me, telling me I could make it to the top if I kept a good work ethic and stayed away from fast women and that 'bad crowd' down on 32nd street.

"Instead of looking at de championship," he told me, "you could be looking at de yudge."

But did I listen to Manny?

Nah.

He would always say after the match, "I try to tell you, but you no leeson. NOW look at you!"

And sure enough, the fast women and bad crowd got me up in front of a local magistrate, who told me, "Son, you had a chance to almost be somebody. Considering her age, I'm only going to give you thirty-six months. You can do your time in the state prissson, or you can take your chances in the 'Nam."

I said to to her, "What the fuck, Your Honor. That's an easy choice. I'll take my chances in the 'Nam."

The rest is history.

___

So, I was big then, compared to the Vietnamese, and I still am, compared to the Thai. That's why they call me 'Mr. Big'.

Or, that's what I thought. Then, here I come to find out that it don't mean, 'Mr. Big' or 'Big Daddy' at all, but rather, 'Big Brother.'

"Ohhhhhh. P' Yai," they say when they finally get it. "That's like means, big brother. Same same oldest son."

Donchaknow that let the wind out of my sails, when all along I thought it had something to do with importance.

_______

So, besides the ice cream man and the lady who comes by selling chicken-on-a-stick, there is the Knife Man, selling any kind of shape and size of balade imaginable. See? They've got me talking like that. That's 'blade'. He's got everything you need, from fingernails clippers, Edward Scissorhands and general purposwe kitchen knives, up to a French guillotine.

And besides the Ice Cream Man and the Chicken Lady and the Knife Man, there's the Broom Man, the Aluminum Ladder man, the Fresh Fish & Meat Lady, the Salad Lady, the Burmese Wicker Chair Guys, the Portrait-of-the-King vendors, the Basket Lady, the Carved Buffalo Horn Lady, the Feather Duster & Toilet Bowl Brush Man, the Iced Pop-in-a-Sack and Snack People, and the Cushion & Stuffed Animal Man, coming through either on foot, pulling a two-wheeled cart, or on 3-wheeled motorcycles with side cars, outfitted with sun shades or umbrellas for when it rains.

________

And it was raining last night, so the Bamboo Girl who was going to attend the dinner party chose to remain in Takuapa instead, and bring down the free bamboo chair tonight, instead of in the pouring rain, when all those people who we didn't think would show because of the weather, showed up anyway for dinner, the first fifteen being Thai, and making me wonder if any of the foreigners at all would show.

They did, fashionably late, and staying late, whereas all the Thai were gone by 8:30, except for Jack.

Turned out that we ordered way too much food. The fish and chicken curry were big hits, but we had too much fried rice, and didn't really need the ten kilos for the one vegetarian who showed up.

Had just the right amount of small giveaway trinkets, flower arrangements, potted plants, shower caddies and the evening's main prize for that lucky person out there, a fully automated electronic mosquito zapper, that I ended up keeping for the house.

An open house dinner party was how it was billed, and an open house in the tropics needs a mosquito zapper. Had to re-think that one. Had to think outside the giveaway box.

"What's the occasion?" a few had asked, and I tried to explain the ideas of give-away and, 'feeding the people' out of a spirit of thanksgiving, any day, any time, and not just on one prescribed American holiday that reminds many Native Americans of an unpleasant series of horrific circumstances arising out of this one particular event that subsequently became institutionalized in American history as 'Playoff Day'.

__

So, here I was holding this dinner party with the excited anticipation of giving away as much as I possibly could, and then all these folks began showing up with gifts. The wife of Nakon, the iron- worker who custom-made my iron gate, showed up with two plants, an Aloe and an Orchid; other people showed up with food, drink, and desserts, and I ended up with more beer than with what we had on hand for the beginning of the party.

That's the way it went, everyone asking me about the house, "How much you pay?"

If you're a foreigner staying long time in a rental property, everyone asks you that same question. On the street, they'll all ask you where you're going. If you're a foreigner, or 'farang' as we're known here, they know you must be going somewhere. You've GOT to be going somewhere. The third question is, 'How long you stay?'

I want to say, "On planet Earth?" and, "Heaven, I hope," to where I'm going, and, "Why is it important to you how much I'm paying? What are you going to do with that information?"

But that would be too smart-alecky and far too oblique for the humor to be appreciated, so I don't use it that much, instead, answering honestly, "Not much", "Khao Lak", and, "six months," to their questions.

We laugh about how that question, 'Where are you going?' from complete strangers, would be received in New Jersey or New York.

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The big event of the evening was the low-key arrival of Chatchada, the internationally famous supernova artist-in-residence who assists Digger and Melanie with their art and English program at Senanakul High School up in Takuapa. She GAVE me one of her pieces, a framed charcoal abstract of fishing boats, prominently displayed on the kitchen wall, the first thing you see when you enter the house.

'Better leave it right where it is,' I thought, gazing at it in admiration. Leave it where it is, rather than take it back to the States and run the chance of having it ripped off in my absence, like those drunk Indians did this time when they broke into my reservation home and took with them all my tools, irreplacable artwork, and ceremonial drum, Brother Tom said in an email.

Home? Where's home? You mean planet Earth?

How long you stay? I don't know.



end