Six Months Neglect
02.22.10
Khuk Khak, Thailand - Out in the garden that never dies, how the plants would suffer through the hard season with no caretaker providing an attention to which they had grown accustomed.
What would withstand six months of neglect?
One’s health? That trip to Dr. So-and-So. The exercise, the diet, that tooth, the nagging injury, the engine repair, the dust in the corners. Couldn’t that job wait until spring?
And what of family and friends? A silent relationship, suspended animation, Cinderella’s illusion, the frog prince’s expectation, an unspoken repression, a state of denial, an atrophied claim, a forgot to tell you, an it can wait.
The unfinished work set aside, a potted plant, a crown or filling, a manuscript, a painting, a song.
Who would wait? The soldier’s mate, the fiancé, a promise, a vow, a tour of duty, off to college, a stretch in the joint, aboard the ISS, an appointment, a secret liaison, out of state relocation, no food, no water, no email.
The massage, the meditation, the walk to the Sea. The stretching, the designs, the renovation, the updates, the records, the competition, the time off, the contract renewal, the surgery, the root canal. Can it be put off for six months?
Hadn’t heard from them. Found another owner. Never watered it. People broke in. Slow leak. Needs a jumpstart. Pipes froze. Gonna need a new transmission. Better send flowers. Gonna have to replace the whole damned thing. Rust in the lines, residue in the filter. Gonna have to find her down in Texas somewhere. Gonna have to send an envoy. Gonna have to patch things up. Gonna minimally need duct tape, maybe a new identity. Gonna have to reconfigure, re-boot. Gonna have to shut the whole system down. Might mean war.
What in a life can go for six months without checking in? A definitive statement? To be continued? Pick it up where you left off? Let it go another six?
The garden that never dies will endure until the rainy season, but it may need occasional help, parched, wilting, crying for a drink.
-end
.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Command Performance Cancelled
12:02:10.
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - You ever ruined brand new clothes? Brand new, just out of the sack, first time you'd worn it; then, a spilled drink, a spaghetti stain, leaned against fresh paint, a hot ash, a cat's claws, a puppy's paws, caught on a piece of something, sticking out from something, fist fight at the reception.
I have. What's the feeling? Self-disgust? Karmic fate for you and that shirt, those pants, that outfit? Toss it in the bin, give it to the Salvation Army, send it to the rez.
___
You Okay Today?
"What brought you here today?" she asked.
With a perfectly straight face, I replied slowly, "Pine Ridge VA shuttle.".
"No, I mean," she began, then hesitated a half second to wonder if I was serious and that far out of sync, or being a smartass. "I mean, what brought you in ... why are you here to see me?"
"Just teasing," I said, laughing. "I drove my truck."
She looked at me hard and cold, not smiling, not into playing games or teasing, repeating her last question.
The other day I asked a visiting friend if it was ethical to reveal the contents of a conversation between a psychiatrist and their client. I already had the answer, but was testing his armchair ethics. He hemmed and hawed around, being evasive and hard to pin down, resting on moral relativity.
Of course, it depends. It's relative to the variables of the nature of the information and where you're sitting. If you're the shrink, absolutely not, unless the nature of the information is homocidal or suicidal. Otherwise, it's confidential.
If you're the client or a fly on the wall, then you're free to disclose any or all parts of the session at your discretion. You can say anything. It's your file, after all.
"The nurses over in intake suggested I make an appointment," I said honestly.
"Why did they say that?" she asked.
"Could have been my answers to their questions," I said, adding, "or maybe they wanted info on you. They told me to report back."
The news that the nurses over in Building A wanted information on her, and that she must be the subject of gossip, caught her by surprise and made her wonder, trumping my answers to the intake questionaire. She went vacant for just a second, wearing the expression of someone in disbelief of the incredible filth they had just encountered upon entry into a neigbor's home, then she caught her flow and turned to her computer screen, checking my history, while I sat studying. the degrees on her wall.
"Why haven't you made an appointment in five years?" she asked, turning to me.
"I've been feeling better," I told her. "And you're the fourth person in this position I've talked to over here. There's a lot of turnover in your job."
Rather than pursue an inquiry into the high rate of turnover in her position, the conversation turned to why she was there and where she had come from and the schools she'd attended and where she did her internship, and where she sat during the football. games between IU. and Purdue, the schools she'd attended, and when it flowed back to me, I told her I couldn't get out of my head those angry words those people were shouting at me.
"What people?" she asked.
"The audience," I said.
"What were they yelling?" she asked.
"GET OFF THE STAGE!" I yelled.
I declined her offer of a non-SSRI* pharmaceutical intervention, saying that by the time they kicked in,** I would probably be feeling better, and that I was feeling poorly last week; I was ok right then because I was boarding a flight in two days.
"Can I see your notes?"
___
Captive of Thung Maphrao
The Thai are big on songbirds. You see them everywhere, caged in custom wooden cages. I know the guy who makes them. Lives right across the street.
On Saturdays and sometimes other days, they have songbird calling contests, with the cars and motorcycles pulled alongside the road, like for a funeral or an auction or yard sale in the US.
You can often see a guy going down the road on a motorbike, cage in hand, covered with a cloth. Sometimes there will be a guy riding on the back, holding a cage in either hand. They say some of those birds are worth ten thousand baht, about three hundred bucks.
They whistle and call to the birds, and blow a metal whistle, or shoot a gun, getting all sorts of smart song responses from the birds, all fluttering around in their cages in rows on aluminum racks, the owners and observers sitting around on the ground. The winners of the competitions are considered quite valuable, they say.
At some of the larger temples, bird vendors sit outside and sell you a small bird in a small cage. You purchase the bird and release it for good merit. Everybody gains; you, the bird, the vendor.
___
They called him 'Lucky', but he wasn't lucky at all, being chained to a wooden post in a shed; a short chain at that, allowing him just enough tether to dig a cool hole at the base of the post, penalty for his penchant of killing the chickens.
___
In the vilage of Thung Maphrao, there was a man held captive and under the spell of a powerful shaman's family, allowing just enough tether to dig a hole, and he did. He was free to go, but he kept returning, making everybody wonder and attempt conclusions.
___
"... and a dream consultant, but not for fees."
"You mean, you interpret people's dreams?"
"No. There's a difference. Dream interpretation involves interpreting highly personalized meaning and symbolism going on inside someone else's head, a charlatan's act, and dream consultation involves only listening, listening to people describe their dreams."
___
Three dogs ran alongside the road under the lamplight as I sat in Khoh Kloi awaiting a bus to Malaysia on a visa run, a dreaded trip snatching me from my imprisoning in-country comfort zone. The last dog limped along on three legs, stopping to smell something as his friends trotted on, then sprinted to catch up with them, sprinting with a limp.
'That dog on three legs is faster than a man on two,' I thought.
Dogs can run faster, no question. They can smell better than man. They don't have to worry about the rent or a counseling load. It seems that their primary task in life is to find a good place to stay, maybe pull a little guard duty.
Their disadvantages? They don't have hands, thus, they aren't inventive. They can't have mood rings or chia pets, or listen to Def Leppard. They have to listen to us.
-end
* Psycho/pharmo lingo/babble for 'Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor'.
** Two to three weeks.
.
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - You ever ruined brand new clothes? Brand new, just out of the sack, first time you'd worn it; then, a spilled drink, a spaghetti stain, leaned against fresh paint, a hot ash, a cat's claws, a puppy's paws, caught on a piece of something, sticking out from something, fist fight at the reception.
I have. What's the feeling? Self-disgust? Karmic fate for you and that shirt, those pants, that outfit? Toss it in the bin, give it to the Salvation Army, send it to the rez.
___
You Okay Today?
"What brought you here today?" she asked.
With a perfectly straight face, I replied slowly, "Pine Ridge VA shuttle.".
"No, I mean," she began, then hesitated a half second to wonder if I was serious and that far out of sync, or being a smartass. "I mean, what brought you in ... why are you here to see me?"
"Just teasing," I said, laughing. "I drove my truck."
She looked at me hard and cold, not smiling, not into playing games or teasing, repeating her last question.
The other day I asked a visiting friend if it was ethical to reveal the contents of a conversation between a psychiatrist and their client. I already had the answer, but was testing his armchair ethics. He hemmed and hawed around, being evasive and hard to pin down, resting on moral relativity.
Of course, it depends. It's relative to the variables of the nature of the information and where you're sitting. If you're the shrink, absolutely not, unless the nature of the information is homocidal or suicidal. Otherwise, it's confidential.
If you're the client or a fly on the wall, then you're free to disclose any or all parts of the session at your discretion. You can say anything. It's your file, after all.
"The nurses over in intake suggested I make an appointment," I said honestly.
"Why did they say that?" she asked.
"Could have been my answers to their questions," I said, adding, "or maybe they wanted info on you. They told me to report back."
The news that the nurses over in Building A wanted information on her, and that she must be the subject of gossip, caught her by surprise and made her wonder, trumping my answers to the intake questionaire. She went vacant for just a second, wearing the expression of someone in disbelief of the incredible filth they had just encountered upon entry into a neigbor's home, then she caught her flow and turned to her computer screen, checking my history, while I sat studying. the degrees on her wall.
"Why haven't you made an appointment in five years?" she asked, turning to me.
"I've been feeling better," I told her. "And you're the fourth person in this position I've talked to over here. There's a lot of turnover in your job."
Rather than pursue an inquiry into the high rate of turnover in her position, the conversation turned to why she was there and where she had come from and the schools she'd attended and where she did her internship, and where she sat during the football. games between IU. and Purdue, the schools she'd attended, and when it flowed back to me, I told her I couldn't get out of my head those angry words those people were shouting at me.
"What people?" she asked.
"The audience," I said.
"What were they yelling?" she asked.
"GET OFF THE STAGE!" I yelled.
I declined her offer of a non-SSRI* pharmaceutical intervention, saying that by the time they kicked in,** I would probably be feeling better, and that I was feeling poorly last week; I was ok right then because I was boarding a flight in two days.
"Can I see your notes?"
___
Captive of Thung Maphrao
The Thai are big on songbirds. You see them everywhere, caged in custom wooden cages. I know the guy who makes them. Lives right across the street.
On Saturdays and sometimes other days, they have songbird calling contests, with the cars and motorcycles pulled alongside the road, like for a funeral or an auction or yard sale in the US.
You can often see a guy going down the road on a motorbike, cage in hand, covered with a cloth. Sometimes there will be a guy riding on the back, holding a cage in either hand. They say some of those birds are worth ten thousand baht, about three hundred bucks.
They whistle and call to the birds, and blow a metal whistle, or shoot a gun, getting all sorts of smart song responses from the birds, all fluttering around in their cages in rows on aluminum racks, the owners and observers sitting around on the ground. The winners of the competitions are considered quite valuable, they say.
At some of the larger temples, bird vendors sit outside and sell you a small bird in a small cage. You purchase the bird and release it for good merit. Everybody gains; you, the bird, the vendor.
___
They called him 'Lucky', but he wasn't lucky at all, being chained to a wooden post in a shed; a short chain at that, allowing him just enough tether to dig a cool hole at the base of the post, penalty for his penchant of killing the chickens.
___
In the vilage of Thung Maphrao, there was a man held captive and under the spell of a powerful shaman's family, allowing just enough tether to dig a hole, and he did. He was free to go, but he kept returning, making everybody wonder and attempt conclusions.
___
"... and a dream consultant, but not for fees."
"You mean, you interpret people's dreams?"
"No. There's a difference. Dream interpretation involves interpreting highly personalized meaning and symbolism going on inside someone else's head, a charlatan's act, and dream consultation involves only listening, listening to people describe their dreams."
___
Three dogs ran alongside the road under the lamplight as I sat in Khoh Kloi awaiting a bus to Malaysia on a visa run, a dreaded trip snatching me from my imprisoning in-country comfort zone. The last dog limped along on three legs, stopping to smell something as his friends trotted on, then sprinted to catch up with them, sprinting with a limp.
'That dog on three legs is faster than a man on two,' I thought.
Dogs can run faster, no question. They can smell better than man. They don't have to worry about the rent or a counseling load. It seems that their primary task in life is to find a good place to stay, maybe pull a little guard duty.
Their disadvantages? They don't have hands, thus, they aren't inventive. They can't have mood rings or chia pets, or listen to Def Leppard. They have to listen to us.
-end
* Psycho/pharmo lingo/babble for 'Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor'.
** Two to three weeks.
.
Monday, February 08, 2010
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Bat Out Of Hell
02.04.10
Bat Out Of Hell
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - That thing about the cat and the scalding water, ‘What does a cat hate worse than being sprayed with cold water?’ It wasn’t intentional at all; it’s just that the hose had been lying out in the sun all afternoon, and what can I say? It’s the tropics.
__
Everybody knows what going 'like a bat out of hell’ means. ‘Went by me like a bat out of hell.’ ‘Came out of there like a bat out of hell.’ When going like a bat out of hell, especially on a motorbike, you should never go full bat. Everybody knows you never go full bat.
__
I don’t particularly like driving at night, especially on a motorbike. Went up to Takuapa, some thirty kilometers north of here, a half hour ride, after sunset, fully knowing the drive home would be in the dark.
You never know when the Good Lord is going to take you, right? So if you’re expecting it, then it should come as no surprise. It could be a big hole in the road that could easily send a bike cart wheeling and the rider spinning through the air, KIA on impact with the asphalt, or that elephant appearing out of nowhere, heading home also.
I had to take a second look, since these days ever since the 90s I don’t like driving at night because of failing eyesight, a kind of blur. Especially on the streets of Takuapa, where the lighting is poor, there is constant construction throughout the city, the pavement is uneven, and you just might run into an elephant headed home.
“I’m sure glad I wasn’t coming the other way,” I thought, noticing him just at the last minute. “I would have hit him.”
That’s what had me thinking about the high possibility of an accident, and going like a bat out of hell, assurance of death. It’s just all so tenuous, existence, life, when you think about it, a mere 93 million miles from our nearest star.
So tenuous and fragile. Out there floating in the Sea, something could come along and gobble you up. Chance you gotta take, like crossing the street. Should’ve zigged instead of zagged. Should’ve caught the next flight.
Although at night like a bat out of hell, I should have been paying strict attention to the highway, the train of thought led to how I wouldn’t want to die. Wouldn’t want to die in the sky, or falling from the sky, hang gliding, parachute failure, Hindenburg sequel, or blasted out of my seat from an aircraft. Wouldn’t want to drown or have anything to do with not getting air, like, mine shaft suffocation, spelunking, or scuba diving. Wouldn’t want to get eaten by a shark, or any other big Jonah-sized fish.
Don’t want to hit an elephant, nor get hit blindside by fist, pool cue, wrecking ball or subway train. No RPG, IED, or UXO. Wouldn’t want people saying, “Never saw it coming…never knew what hit him.” Screw that.
Don’t want to die in a NASCAR crash or any other sort of public event or arena. No Daniel in the lion's den, Christian martyr, gladiator combat, crucifiction or Little Black Sambo. No sirens sweetly singing. Don’t want to die in a car or any other form of transport. No hangman’s noose, lethal injection, hospital, nursing home, or life support hoses, undignified or embarrassed.
Don’t want to die at someone else’s hand or someone else’s hand on the wheel, no death wish or suicide attack. No imprisonment of any sort, body or mind. No Alzheimer’s. No drug-induced coma.
Don’t want to die from carelessness or inattention, like stepping off a curb, looking the other way and getting whacked. Don’t want to go from ineptitude, or any other kind of stupidass negligence or lack of awareness. Please, for me, no mindlessness accident or bizarre twist of fate.
I’m trying to narrow it down, here.
Along with his autograph during an author-signing session in Rochester NY for his book, “The Wheel of Death,” The Zen Buddhist Roshi Philip Kapleau wrote, ‘May you live long and die well.’
I sure liked that. Hope it happens. For you, too.
A good way to go, for me I think, is of old age, out working in my garden. I’ve been working on that visualization for a number of years, for the distance future, of course. Old, old age, experiencing a convergence of garden and self, cultivating compassion with no anticipation of harvest. Along the way, try to contribute to the happiness and well-being of plants and other animals.
Dad went well. I liked his style. Worked hard, lived long, had a loving family, ate a good dinner prepared by a loving woman, and went in and watched about six innings of the Cubs in a Lazy Boy recliner and drifted off, catching my mom by surprise, washing the dinner dishes, when he failed to answer.
Well, you could go on and let your mind meander about all the ways you wouldn’t want to die. Like Elvis, Michael, high and low profile deaths, forgotten and tortured prisoner with no name. But we all come and go, our time here measured in what, years? Breaths? and against what scale? Life of the earth, the gods, a tomato plant, that of a butterfly?
-end
.
Bat Out Of Hell
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - That thing about the cat and the scalding water, ‘What does a cat hate worse than being sprayed with cold water?’ It wasn’t intentional at all; it’s just that the hose had been lying out in the sun all afternoon, and what can I say? It’s the tropics.
__
Everybody knows what going 'like a bat out of hell’ means. ‘Went by me like a bat out of hell.’ ‘Came out of there like a bat out of hell.’ When going like a bat out of hell, especially on a motorbike, you should never go full bat. Everybody knows you never go full bat.
__
I don’t particularly like driving at night, especially on a motorbike. Went up to Takuapa, some thirty kilometers north of here, a half hour ride, after sunset, fully knowing the drive home would be in the dark.
You never know when the Good Lord is going to take you, right? So if you’re expecting it, then it should come as no surprise. It could be a big hole in the road that could easily send a bike cart wheeling and the rider spinning through the air, KIA on impact with the asphalt, or that elephant appearing out of nowhere, heading home also.
I had to take a second look, since these days ever since the 90s I don’t like driving at night because of failing eyesight, a kind of blur. Especially on the streets of Takuapa, where the lighting is poor, there is constant construction throughout the city, the pavement is uneven, and you just might run into an elephant headed home.
“I’m sure glad I wasn’t coming the other way,” I thought, noticing him just at the last minute. “I would have hit him.”
That’s what had me thinking about the high possibility of an accident, and going like a bat out of hell, assurance of death. It’s just all so tenuous, existence, life, when you think about it, a mere 93 million miles from our nearest star.
So tenuous and fragile. Out there floating in the Sea, something could come along and gobble you up. Chance you gotta take, like crossing the street. Should’ve zigged instead of zagged. Should’ve caught the next flight.
Although at night like a bat out of hell, I should have been paying strict attention to the highway, the train of thought led to how I wouldn’t want to die. Wouldn’t want to die in the sky, or falling from the sky, hang gliding, parachute failure, Hindenburg sequel, or blasted out of my seat from an aircraft. Wouldn’t want to drown or have anything to do with not getting air, like, mine shaft suffocation, spelunking, or scuba diving. Wouldn’t want to get eaten by a shark, or any other big Jonah-sized fish.
Don’t want to hit an elephant, nor get hit blindside by fist, pool cue, wrecking ball or subway train. No RPG, IED, or UXO. Wouldn’t want people saying, “Never saw it coming…never knew what hit him.” Screw that.
Don’t want to die in a NASCAR crash or any other sort of public event or arena. No Daniel in the lion's den, Christian martyr, gladiator combat, crucifiction or Little Black Sambo. No sirens sweetly singing. Don’t want to die in a car or any other form of transport. No hangman’s noose, lethal injection, hospital, nursing home, or life support hoses, undignified or embarrassed.
Don’t want to die at someone else’s hand or someone else’s hand on the wheel, no death wish or suicide attack. No imprisonment of any sort, body or mind. No Alzheimer’s. No drug-induced coma.
Don’t want to die from carelessness or inattention, like stepping off a curb, looking the other way and getting whacked. Don’t want to go from ineptitude, or any other kind of stupidass negligence or lack of awareness. Please, for me, no mindlessness accident or bizarre twist of fate.
I’m trying to narrow it down, here.
Along with his autograph during an author-signing session in Rochester NY for his book, “The Wheel of Death,” The Zen Buddhist Roshi Philip Kapleau wrote, ‘May you live long and die well.’
I sure liked that. Hope it happens. For you, too.
A good way to go, for me I think, is of old age, out working in my garden. I’ve been working on that visualization for a number of years, for the distance future, of course. Old, old age, experiencing a convergence of garden and self, cultivating compassion with no anticipation of harvest. Along the way, try to contribute to the happiness and well-being of plants and other animals.
Dad went well. I liked his style. Worked hard, lived long, had a loving family, ate a good dinner prepared by a loving woman, and went in and watched about six innings of the Cubs in a Lazy Boy recliner and drifted off, catching my mom by surprise, washing the dinner dishes, when he failed to answer.
Well, you could go on and let your mind meander about all the ways you wouldn’t want to die. Like Elvis, Michael, high and low profile deaths, forgotten and tortured prisoner with no name. But we all come and go, our time here measured in what, years? Breaths? and against what scale? Life of the earth, the gods, a tomato plant, that of a butterfly?
-end
.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Out Of The Blue
01.30.10
Out Of The Blue
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Out of the blue, just as mysteriously as it ceased to function, and as if it had a mind of its own, my computer ‘decided’ it wanted to return to operating status, after being unable to even turn on, at which point I took the machine a half hour north to Takuapa (Tah-koo-uh-pah) IT, where last month they installed a new hard drive, and then informed me after this latest visit that it needed a new motherboard, the warranty had expired, maybe they can fix it at Pantip Plaza in Bangkok but it’s going to be so expensive I might as well consider a new computer, but otherwise take this one back to the U.S. and have Dell fix it there.
So today, it works. God works in mysterious ways, they say. Or, maybe it can only be explained by swamp gas.
A lot of my material comes to me just as I’m falling off to sleep, and I think, ‘I should get up and write that down,’ then think, ‘no, I can remember this one – it’s too good to forget.’ But then, as sleep would have it, I forget it, and…or remember it but can’t ever again find a cohesive context to use it sensibly, so you can look at it two ways; you aren’t getting my best stuff, or, I’m forgetting my best stuff. So, all this is second rate, right?
Activity on the Lake
This lake, Lake Komaneeyakhet, I call it, since the locals know the Wat, the temple on the east side where there is an elementary school, a swimming pool, and tennis courts, with at least three semi-permanent Myanmar camps of several hundred second-class citizens between here and there, is one of several small lakes in the area that absorbed the shock of the tsunami five years ago that left the inhabitants of Khuk Khak relatively unscathed psychologically, but they say there are too many ghosts down on the beach, and there’s a crocodile in the lake.
Big shindig going on over at the Wat tonight under a full moon, with a big shadow theatre stage set up, dozens of vendors selling food and drink, monk toiletry buckets, kid toys, games, tools, used shirt, and your favorite Buddha amulet. A three-day celebration, the significance of which I am ignorant, but there’s a lot going on over there, with a monk walking around all day with a remote microphone on loudspeakers blasting across the water, doing a MC public address routine, I think. Come one, come all.
Ooooh, it’s big. Really big. Huge, in fact. Just came back, weaving my bike through a evening sea of several thousand people on the paved road through the temple grounds. Luang Pau Weng’s 40th memorial celebration, they say.
Big amplified sound, fireworks, floating lanterns, the wide palm-lined entrance avenue from the highway to the wat filled with vending carts, alternating blue and white florescent lights, dried squid on a stick, cotton candy and other sweets, pork on a stick, ice cream, people dressed in white, sitting on blue plastic chairs in a large pavilion, the large grounds turned into a parking lot, a double-decker bus full of people, a van full of monks off-loads. It’s big. Really big.
Across the lake, Karl’s wife, Mon, says, ‘Maybe croc-o-die come out.’
___
My neighbor four doors down, Damon, the tattooed bad boy biker from England with whom I have nothing in common other than living in his proximity, was sitting out on his front porch, taking a break from whatever was going on inside the house, when I suggested rather than just sitting there, we could fix his rotted, jerry-rigged bamboo frame that held his porch lights, two strands of amber tiny lights encased in small bamboo balls about the size of tennis balls.
“All you need is a new piece of bamboo,” I said.
“I’ve got it right there,” he said, nodding at two lengths of bamboo lying in the yard that had been spliced together with four nails as a splint. “Style ThaiLAND,” I said to Damon. “On the rez, we fix this with duct tape.”
I came back for my ladder, then held the bamboo across the handlebars of his motorcycle as Damon struggled with a claw hammer to removed the nails, which had been driven through the bamboo, then bent over. After watching Damon proceed to destroy the bamboo pole, I said, “Like Manny always used to say to me, ‘Here, let me show you an easier way to do that.”
“Who’s Manny?” asked Damon, giving me the hammer.
“My trainer,” I replied, turning the poles around and straightening the nails, then easily driving them back through the bamboo and removing them. Damon didn’t say anything more, nor ask what kind of trainer, as I thought he might.
“Didn’t you used to be a tradesman in England?” I asked. “A carpenter?”
“Yeah,” he replied.
After replacing the bamboo frame and re-stringing the lights, we plugged everything back in. They didn’t work. As Damon fiddled with the light plug, I collected my ladder and drifted on back down here to my place.
___
Over at Karl’s Lakeview Bungalows, I sat in the afternoon eating a slice of Karl’s two-day old chocolate chip cake. It was dry, I told him, and he said in a tone that suggested I was stupid, “You should have had the mango. It’s made today,” as his sign out front attested.
Joe, a returning German guest of Karl’s who I met last year, sat nearly drunk, arguing with his Thai wife, who grabbed the truck keys and sped off, leaving Joe grumbling and mumbling. Mon, waiting tables, asked if he wanted another beer.
“Sing lek ma kop,” said Joe, indicating his wanted a small Singha beer.
“What?” said Mon.
“Sing lek ma kop,” Joe repeated, then as she turned away, knowing I am an American, Joe said in imitation of an exasperated American, somebody from Chicago or New Jersey, “Bring me a Bud…Fuck!” then began laughing drunkenly, uncontrollably, covering his face with a large meaty hand in a vain effort to suppress his mirth.
They don’t have Budweiser in Thailand, never ever seen one, making his joke all the funnier. It was a pretty good joke, coming from a German to an American, indicating his appreciation of American humor and expression. Karl approached our table, raised his eyebrows and gave a slight, helpless ‘oh well’ shrug of his shoulders of his inebriated guest.
____
Early this morning I went down to Mr. Gui’s hardware store for a planer that Mark needed to borrow to finish his new bar tables. While there, I asked for further explanation of the weekend’s festivities at the Wat.
“Today, five o’clock, they take Luang Pau Weng to spirit house,” he informed me, so I don’t want to miss that.
He went on to explain that Luang Pau Weng’s remains had not deterioratetd for 40 years.
“Body no die,” he said, pinching the skin on his arm. ‘Has fingernails…has hair,’ said Mr. Gui, pulling on his hair.
Apparently, Luang Pau Weng was in possession of miraculous powers. “One day,” began Mr. Gui, “Luang Pau Weng sat at Takuapa bus station, and people say, ‘Get on, come on, we go to Khuk Khak.’
‘No,’ said the old monk. “I walk.’
“When the bus arrived in Khuk Khak at the Wat, there sat Luang Pau Weng, legs crossed, smoking a cigarette. All the people on the bus look and say, ‘OHHH?’ ”
____
As I pulled out onto the highway, I had to follow that load of chickens, the cages stacked twelve-high, four times the height of the truck, feathers blowing out as the truck sped down the road. I was certain it was going to overturn.
I had never seen a load stacked that high, except for the guy on the motorbike with two dozen crates of eggs lashed on behind him, six feet over his head.
Amazingly, the chicken truck maintained upright as the driver weaved on springs and two wheels around motorbikes and turning vehicles, losing me as I chased him five kilometers through Bang Niang and southward toward Khao Lak. In my mind I saw the overturned truck with cages burst open and chickens scattering in the traffic, what could promise to be a terrific photo op, but it never happened.
___
Returned to the Wat for the placement of Luang Pau Weng’s remains in the spiffy new spirit house / mini-temple built for the purpose thereof. Thousands had gathered for the ceremony, everybody but a half dozen of us dressed entirely in white. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration. Maybe there were four of us.
After waiting in silent formation for an interminable time that would have made a marine corps boot camp appear as child’s play, all the local monks, and those trucked in for the occasion, led the throng of people carrying the old monk’s body in the fanciest casket I have ever seen, three times around the small temple to its resting spot, where the crowd pressed forward into a compact, compressed knit of humanity seeking a closer reach, like an Elvis concert.
You know how they do the public funerals of slain martyrs in Palestine and Iran, with huge masses of jostling people carrying the casket on their shoulders? It was sort of like that, but not nearly as visceral and mad. The people carried a long string, a very long string, affixed at one end to the casket, and the other disappearing deep into the crowd.
Having channeled the old monk’s spirit, I sat off to the side eating noodles on the steps of an adjacent temple (there’s like, four or five temples of varying sizes on the grounds), being forgiven for eating during the ceremony and not wearing white, nor being Thai, short, with black hair. He clearly understood that I, as a non-Buddhist but empathetic foreigner, had only a slight clue of my cultural and religious impropriety.
There were other people eating, too. I wasn’t the only one. There were six or seven of us, at least. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. Could have been more like four.
The front rank of five monks carried incense, flowers, a large gold-framed picture of the monk, and holy water, which was splashed this way and that on the attendees as the procession passed.
From the photo, taken when he was already old already, looked as if he was a pretty neat guy. I wonder what he really knew, and if indeed he was resident of another realm, bestowing blessings on faithful practitioners and watching the whole affair, and me eat noodles, or if he was simply gone, his mummified remains holding a spellbound populace in a perpetuated mystical belief that somehow, by venerating his life and accomplishment, their lives will be enhanced.
Alms, tithes, frankincense, flesh offerings, gifts, sacrifices, and desperate bargains. Feed the monks, dance through fire, swim in the Sea. Mummies have hair and fingernails. Elvis has hair and fingernails. Under the full moon, firecrackers and festivities, will the crocodile come ashore?
-end
.
Out Of The Blue
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Out of the blue, just as mysteriously as it ceased to function, and as if it had a mind of its own, my computer ‘decided’ it wanted to return to operating status, after being unable to even turn on, at which point I took the machine a half hour north to Takuapa (Tah-koo-uh-pah) IT, where last month they installed a new hard drive, and then informed me after this latest visit that it needed a new motherboard, the warranty had expired, maybe they can fix it at Pantip Plaza in Bangkok but it’s going to be so expensive I might as well consider a new computer, but otherwise take this one back to the U.S. and have Dell fix it there.
So today, it works. God works in mysterious ways, they say. Or, maybe it can only be explained by swamp gas.
A lot of my material comes to me just as I’m falling off to sleep, and I think, ‘I should get up and write that down,’ then think, ‘no, I can remember this one – it’s too good to forget.’ But then, as sleep would have it, I forget it, and…or remember it but can’t ever again find a cohesive context to use it sensibly, so you can look at it two ways; you aren’t getting my best stuff, or, I’m forgetting my best stuff. So, all this is second rate, right?
Activity on the Lake
This lake, Lake Komaneeyakhet, I call it, since the locals know the Wat, the temple on the east side where there is an elementary school, a swimming pool, and tennis courts, with at least three semi-permanent Myanmar camps of several hundred second-class citizens between here and there, is one of several small lakes in the area that absorbed the shock of the tsunami five years ago that left the inhabitants of Khuk Khak relatively unscathed psychologically, but they say there are too many ghosts down on the beach, and there’s a crocodile in the lake.
Big shindig going on over at the Wat tonight under a full moon, with a big shadow theatre stage set up, dozens of vendors selling food and drink, monk toiletry buckets, kid toys, games, tools, used shirt, and your favorite Buddha amulet. A three-day celebration, the significance of which I am ignorant, but there’s a lot going on over there, with a monk walking around all day with a remote microphone on loudspeakers blasting across the water, doing a MC public address routine, I think. Come one, come all.
Ooooh, it’s big. Really big. Huge, in fact. Just came back, weaving my bike through a evening sea of several thousand people on the paved road through the temple grounds. Luang Pau Weng’s 40th memorial celebration, they say.
Big amplified sound, fireworks, floating lanterns, the wide palm-lined entrance avenue from the highway to the wat filled with vending carts, alternating blue and white florescent lights, dried squid on a stick, cotton candy and other sweets, pork on a stick, ice cream, people dressed in white, sitting on blue plastic chairs in a large pavilion, the large grounds turned into a parking lot, a double-decker bus full of people, a van full of monks off-loads. It’s big. Really big.
Across the lake, Karl’s wife, Mon, says, ‘Maybe croc-o-die come out.’
___
My neighbor four doors down, Damon, the tattooed bad boy biker from England with whom I have nothing in common other than living in his proximity, was sitting out on his front porch, taking a break from whatever was going on inside the house, when I suggested rather than just sitting there, we could fix his rotted, jerry-rigged bamboo frame that held his porch lights, two strands of amber tiny lights encased in small bamboo balls about the size of tennis balls.
“All you need is a new piece of bamboo,” I said.
“I’ve got it right there,” he said, nodding at two lengths of bamboo lying in the yard that had been spliced together with four nails as a splint. “Style ThaiLAND,” I said to Damon. “On the rez, we fix this with duct tape.”
I came back for my ladder, then held the bamboo across the handlebars of his motorcycle as Damon struggled with a claw hammer to removed the nails, which had been driven through the bamboo, then bent over. After watching Damon proceed to destroy the bamboo pole, I said, “Like Manny always used to say to me, ‘Here, let me show you an easier way to do that.”
“Who’s Manny?” asked Damon, giving me the hammer.
“My trainer,” I replied, turning the poles around and straightening the nails, then easily driving them back through the bamboo and removing them. Damon didn’t say anything more, nor ask what kind of trainer, as I thought he might.
“Didn’t you used to be a tradesman in England?” I asked. “A carpenter?”
“Yeah,” he replied.
After replacing the bamboo frame and re-stringing the lights, we plugged everything back in. They didn’t work. As Damon fiddled with the light plug, I collected my ladder and drifted on back down here to my place.
___
Over at Karl’s Lakeview Bungalows, I sat in the afternoon eating a slice of Karl’s two-day old chocolate chip cake. It was dry, I told him, and he said in a tone that suggested I was stupid, “You should have had the mango. It’s made today,” as his sign out front attested.
Joe, a returning German guest of Karl’s who I met last year, sat nearly drunk, arguing with his Thai wife, who grabbed the truck keys and sped off, leaving Joe grumbling and mumbling. Mon, waiting tables, asked if he wanted another beer.
“Sing lek ma kop,” said Joe, indicating his wanted a small Singha beer.
“What?” said Mon.
“Sing lek ma kop,” Joe repeated, then as she turned away, knowing I am an American, Joe said in imitation of an exasperated American, somebody from Chicago or New Jersey, “Bring me a Bud…Fuck!” then began laughing drunkenly, uncontrollably, covering his face with a large meaty hand in a vain effort to suppress his mirth.
They don’t have Budweiser in Thailand, never ever seen one, making his joke all the funnier. It was a pretty good joke, coming from a German to an American, indicating his appreciation of American humor and expression. Karl approached our table, raised his eyebrows and gave a slight, helpless ‘oh well’ shrug of his shoulders of his inebriated guest.
____
Early this morning I went down to Mr. Gui’s hardware store for a planer that Mark needed to borrow to finish his new bar tables. While there, I asked for further explanation of the weekend’s festivities at the Wat.
“Today, five o’clock, they take Luang Pau Weng to spirit house,” he informed me, so I don’t want to miss that.
He went on to explain that Luang Pau Weng’s remains had not deterioratetd for 40 years.
“Body no die,” he said, pinching the skin on his arm. ‘Has fingernails…has hair,’ said Mr. Gui, pulling on his hair.
Apparently, Luang Pau Weng was in possession of miraculous powers. “One day,” began Mr. Gui, “Luang Pau Weng sat at Takuapa bus station, and people say, ‘Get on, come on, we go to Khuk Khak.’
‘No,’ said the old monk. “I walk.’
“When the bus arrived in Khuk Khak at the Wat, there sat Luang Pau Weng, legs crossed, smoking a cigarette. All the people on the bus look and say, ‘OHHH?’ ”
____
As I pulled out onto the highway, I had to follow that load of chickens, the cages stacked twelve-high, four times the height of the truck, feathers blowing out as the truck sped down the road. I was certain it was going to overturn.
I had never seen a load stacked that high, except for the guy on the motorbike with two dozen crates of eggs lashed on behind him, six feet over his head.
Amazingly, the chicken truck maintained upright as the driver weaved on springs and two wheels around motorbikes and turning vehicles, losing me as I chased him five kilometers through Bang Niang and southward toward Khao Lak. In my mind I saw the overturned truck with cages burst open and chickens scattering in the traffic, what could promise to be a terrific photo op, but it never happened.
___
Returned to the Wat for the placement of Luang Pau Weng’s remains in the spiffy new spirit house / mini-temple built for the purpose thereof. Thousands had gathered for the ceremony, everybody but a half dozen of us dressed entirely in white. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration. Maybe there were four of us.
After waiting in silent formation for an interminable time that would have made a marine corps boot camp appear as child’s play, all the local monks, and those trucked in for the occasion, led the throng of people carrying the old monk’s body in the fanciest casket I have ever seen, three times around the small temple to its resting spot, where the crowd pressed forward into a compact, compressed knit of humanity seeking a closer reach, like an Elvis concert.
You know how they do the public funerals of slain martyrs in Palestine and Iran, with huge masses of jostling people carrying the casket on their shoulders? It was sort of like that, but not nearly as visceral and mad. The people carried a long string, a very long string, affixed at one end to the casket, and the other disappearing deep into the crowd.
Having channeled the old monk’s spirit, I sat off to the side eating noodles on the steps of an adjacent temple (there’s like, four or five temples of varying sizes on the grounds), being forgiven for eating during the ceremony and not wearing white, nor being Thai, short, with black hair. He clearly understood that I, as a non-Buddhist but empathetic foreigner, had only a slight clue of my cultural and religious impropriety.
There were other people eating, too. I wasn’t the only one. There were six or seven of us, at least. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. Could have been more like four.
The front rank of five monks carried incense, flowers, a large gold-framed picture of the monk, and holy water, which was splashed this way and that on the attendees as the procession passed.
From the photo, taken when he was already old already, looked as if he was a pretty neat guy. I wonder what he really knew, and if indeed he was resident of another realm, bestowing blessings on faithful practitioners and watching the whole affair, and me eat noodles, or if he was simply gone, his mummified remains holding a spellbound populace in a perpetuated mystical belief that somehow, by venerating his life and accomplishment, their lives will be enhanced.
Alms, tithes, frankincense, flesh offerings, gifts, sacrifices, and desperate bargains. Feed the monks, dance through fire, swim in the Sea. Mummies have hair and fingernails. Elvis has hair and fingernails. Under the full moon, firecrackers and festivities, will the crocodile come ashore?
-end
.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
How Smart We Could Have Been
01.02.10
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Lately, like, in the past year or two, I've experienced a number of people reminding me of how smart they are. I sat and listened to their self-stories of I.Q. testings in the third grade, what they got on their S.A.T.s, entrance exams, how they performed on a Yahoo intelligence test, a Facebook questionaire, how close to genius they must be.
I could have simply said to each of them, right then and there, 'Mine's higher', or reminded them of some stupid shit they've pulled, but who am I to burst anyone's fiction? And to the pup who was bragging about the forty women he'd slept with, I could have told him, 'I stopped counting at 250,' but I didn't want to throw a wet towel on his story.
And to the Gee-How-Smart-I-Am people, I could have added, 'Mine was off the charts. Broke the machine. Needle went wayyyy into the red. They said I was so brilliant, they had no idea of how smart I really was.'
Well, that's what I could have said, or wish I'd said, as 'come back' as they say here for 'reply', but like I probably mentioned previously, and as Manny always used to say, 'You're slow. You're wayyy too slow on your feet. You never gonna make it at this pace.'
So, in fact, I'm a lot slower than most people, the guy who doesn't get the joke, the guy who asks, 'what happened?', late on the scene, bottom third of the class, couldn't find the party, never read the instructions, almost didn't graduate, had to re-take the final...
My degree? Mechanics.
"Is that deisel or gas?" the guy asked, like he thought I'd be good on a VW bus.
"Quantified Interstellar," I could have said. Could have just said, 'Quantum,' I guess, but again, didn't think of it until many days later.
Like Manny, my high school guidance counselor, and my birth doctor all said, 'You haven't got what it takes." Except for Manny, those weren't their exact words, but to give you an idea, my counselor suggested I might have a future in Vietnam, which, at the time, was blazing.
(there he goes, taking the story off into the 'Nam. How long is THIS going to last?)
"You could go to the 'Nam?" she suggested both as a question and a career option. And my birth doctor suggested to my mother that I could be given up for adoption, "you know...if you don't want to keep it," they said he said. "And if we can find some takers."
They didn't have to tell me. I was there. I heard him say it. Verified it in a past-life regression session. I wanted to look him up between that stint with the circus, parole, and the 'Nam, but everything was coming too quick in those days, everything too quick, and my math teacher in middle school sarcastically nicknamed me,'Quickness', and like I said, I was slow, except after those first few times in front of the bench.
"You here for a case?" asked the judge between items on the docket. I had a briefcase, and had dressed like a third-year law student.
"Yes, your Honor," I replied.
"Who's?" the judge asked, flipping through a stack of files.
"Mine," I said.
Upshot of it was, her near-respect soon turned to disdain as she read my file.
"I see here you said you're a rocket scientist," she said. "You must think you're pretty smart."
"YESDRILLSERGEANT!" I almost blurted out, but repressed.
Same thing Manny used to say. God, I got tired of hearing that. "Oh, no, Your Honor," I told her. "I'm not smart. If I was, I wouldn't be here."
She said she couldn't have agreed with me more, sentenced me to fif..five years, suspended it on an option to the 'Nam, which I took, and...the rest is history.
Good news was, didn't have to pull time in the joint. Bad news was, I had to pull two tours in the Nam.
You might be probably thinking, 'going to a war during its heighth isn't very smart.'
And you'd be right. It isn't, especially if you enlist. But going as a medic was, as it turned out. Enlisting, in and of itself, was pretty idiotic, but was perfectly understandable given my dim prospects for a future in the circus and the socio-cultural programming of who's fit for duty in America.
When does a person become the programmer? Ask a VA shrink.
"Ha ha ha," said the jerk with my orders. "You thought becoming a medic was smart, huh? You thought you'd be hanging around educated people, nurses, and drugs, right?"
I thought so, but they put me in helicopters. Grunts on the ground said, "ain't no fuckin' way I'd fly," but I loved it. Good news was, I got to fly. Bad news was, we got shot down.
(end 'Nam digression, return to story)
So, just like Manny, the juvenile home people, and the Ringmaster predicted, "Instead of hearing the man say, 'Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you the next gonna be somebody,' you gonna hear The Man say, 'All rise!'
Sure enough, their prophesies fulfilled, their prescription's definition's boundaries I couldn't escape. Nobody in those days was thinking outside the box. Thinking outside the box is something that wouldn't occur until decades later.
Same way here. People ask, 'You work?'
I, uh, stammer and glance away if I'm having a slow day, which is usually every day, but if I'm quicker on my feet and have done some preliminary rehearsal, I tell them, "Yes. EVERY day!"
'What you do?'
"I'm a doc..a wri..a..stan..er, I'malmostretired."
___
What? You wanted a story about elephants and coconut palms from Thailand? You can write this shit from ANYwhere, man. Don't matter where you are, Manny would say. You're going to be doing whatever you're doing.
Ok. So why not the tropics? Tom said Pine Ridge had two feet of snow.
Or maybe you wanted a story about Li An Song Nu Kyi, a fascinating figure, and boss of the plane production company after the shower caddy venture tanked, not because of market or sales, but because it wasn't fun anymore. It became quite tedious long before the 493rd caddy, the production cut-off.
People still ask, "You still have caddies?"
The plane production is in it's fourth year now, going on five, if I can get the crew back together. It's worse than a band. In a band, you've got egos and attitudes and people trippin' on themselves, and with a crew of Myanmar, you've got all of that, on top of the language problem and illegal immigration status. It's one exasperating episode after another.
The squadron's doing ok, though. We've got some really capable people on board in command positions, a little reckless at times, but they can think for themselves and get the job done.
uh.
uh.
Go on.
"Go on," she said, showing interest, but caught glancing up at the clock.
"I guess I'm eating into your lunch hour," I said, looking over my shoulder at the clock and letting her know I was paying attention to her eyes, the new VA shrink, undergraduate work at Purdue, six years med school at Indiana University, psychiatric internship at...I forget, Chicago or somewhere, doesn't matter, what mattered is that I know those schools, taught at one of 'em, played her hometown, Elkhart, in basketball, which she found remarkably interesting and strangely coincidental, there in her office, where she asked what I taught and was wondering about why I hadn't had an appointment in five years, and my comment, 'the intake nurses wanted me to report back on the new shrink.'*
"Oh,no," she said, dismissing my concern for her time. "We started late."
She'd been on the job for three weeks, the degrees conspicuously large on the wall. I told her they had a high rate of turnover in her position.
She didn't say anything, but let the air fall silent, a cue that I was the one to be doing the talking in that setting. She had already revealed too much, but could rationalize it as establishing a friendly but professional doctor/client rapport. I explained, "South Dakota winters are tough."
When our time was up, leaving her only 35 minutes for lunch, I told her I'd see her in six months. She seemed surprised. "You don't want another appointment for six months?" she asked.
"I'm going away," I replied. "Someplace warm...for my mental health. South Dakota winters are tough."
___
"That was a long time ago, man," my friend said in my kitchen, implying that it was time to let it go. Well, you could say that about Wounded Knee, the Holocaust, the Wells Fargo guy riding shotgun who got shot with an arrow in the teeth, the treaty, birth on Earth, or any other traumatic event.
Good news is, there's treatment, except for the Wells Fargo guy. Recent research says you tell your story, find new activities to plunge into, and surround yourself with friends and a network of support. Exercise and eat right. Go shopping.
Bad news is, when you're in that space, you don't feel like doing any of that shit.
Good news was, there was cardiac recovery. Bad news was, the study control group was already all hospitalized.
___
Am I doing any writing? Like, a book? Yes and no. A manuscript in the works? Well, there's the screenplay, 'Stinky Boy', and the talking medicinal plant story that has the potential of becoming a major motion picture and viral box office hit, and the Ho Chi Minh Trail series that I uh..uh
am working on, and of course, there's that Big One out there, you know, like a trophy fish, just waiting to be caught, or in my case, to be written, since you said 'writing', but, ah, everything in it's own due time, right?
No, it's not...none of this is actually ON PAPER...HA..but they're ideas, and ideas are good, right? ideas while walking down the beach.
- end
*"How is he?" the nurses asked excitedly in the lower hallway of Building A, their eyes alive with the prospect of new gossip, "the new shrink."
"He isn't a he," I told them. "She's a she. And she's young. Just finished up her internship."
.
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Lately, like, in the past year or two, I've experienced a number of people reminding me of how smart they are. I sat and listened to their self-stories of I.Q. testings in the third grade, what they got on their S.A.T.s, entrance exams, how they performed on a Yahoo intelligence test, a Facebook questionaire, how close to genius they must be.
I could have simply said to each of them, right then and there, 'Mine's higher', or reminded them of some stupid shit they've pulled, but who am I to burst anyone's fiction? And to the pup who was bragging about the forty women he'd slept with, I could have told him, 'I stopped counting at 250,' but I didn't want to throw a wet towel on his story.
And to the Gee-How-Smart-I-Am people, I could have added, 'Mine was off the charts. Broke the machine. Needle went wayyyy into the red. They said I was so brilliant, they had no idea of how smart I really was.'
Well, that's what I could have said, or wish I'd said, as 'come back' as they say here for 'reply', but like I probably mentioned previously, and as Manny always used to say, 'You're slow. You're wayyy too slow on your feet. You never gonna make it at this pace.'
So, in fact, I'm a lot slower than most people, the guy who doesn't get the joke, the guy who asks, 'what happened?', late on the scene, bottom third of the class, couldn't find the party, never read the instructions, almost didn't graduate, had to re-take the final...
My degree? Mechanics.
"Is that deisel or gas?" the guy asked, like he thought I'd be good on a VW bus.
"Quantified Interstellar," I could have said. Could have just said, 'Quantum,' I guess, but again, didn't think of it until many days later.
Like Manny, my high school guidance counselor, and my birth doctor all said, 'You haven't got what it takes." Except for Manny, those weren't their exact words, but to give you an idea, my counselor suggested I might have a future in Vietnam, which, at the time, was blazing.
(there he goes, taking the story off into the 'Nam. How long is THIS going to last?)
"You could go to the 'Nam?" she suggested both as a question and a career option. And my birth doctor suggested to my mother that I could be given up for adoption, "you know...if you don't want to keep it," they said he said. "And if we can find some takers."
They didn't have to tell me. I was there. I heard him say it. Verified it in a past-life regression session. I wanted to look him up between that stint with the circus, parole, and the 'Nam, but everything was coming too quick in those days, everything too quick, and my math teacher in middle school sarcastically nicknamed me,'Quickness', and like I said, I was slow, except after those first few times in front of the bench.
"You here for a case?" asked the judge between items on the docket. I had a briefcase, and had dressed like a third-year law student.
"Yes, your Honor," I replied.
"Who's?" the judge asked, flipping through a stack of files.
"Mine," I said.
Upshot of it was, her near-respect soon turned to disdain as she read my file.
"I see here you said you're a rocket scientist," she said. "You must think you're pretty smart."
"YESDRILLSERGEANT!" I almost blurted out, but repressed.
Same thing Manny used to say. God, I got tired of hearing that. "Oh, no, Your Honor," I told her. "I'm not smart. If I was, I wouldn't be here."
She said she couldn't have agreed with me more, sentenced me to fif..five years, suspended it on an option to the 'Nam, which I took, and...the rest is history.
Good news was, didn't have to pull time in the joint. Bad news was, I had to pull two tours in the Nam.
You might be probably thinking, 'going to a war during its heighth isn't very smart.'
And you'd be right. It isn't, especially if you enlist. But going as a medic was, as it turned out. Enlisting, in and of itself, was pretty idiotic, but was perfectly understandable given my dim prospects for a future in the circus and the socio-cultural programming of who's fit for duty in America.
When does a person become the programmer? Ask a VA shrink.
"Ha ha ha," said the jerk with my orders. "You thought becoming a medic was smart, huh? You thought you'd be hanging around educated people, nurses, and drugs, right?"
I thought so, but they put me in helicopters. Grunts on the ground said, "ain't no fuckin' way I'd fly," but I loved it. Good news was, I got to fly. Bad news was, we got shot down.
(end 'Nam digression, return to story)
So, just like Manny, the juvenile home people, and the Ringmaster predicted, "Instead of hearing the man say, 'Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you the next gonna be somebody,' you gonna hear The Man say, 'All rise!'
Sure enough, their prophesies fulfilled, their prescription's definition's boundaries I couldn't escape. Nobody in those days was thinking outside the box. Thinking outside the box is something that wouldn't occur until decades later.
Same way here. People ask, 'You work?'
I, uh, stammer and glance away if I'm having a slow day, which is usually every day, but if I'm quicker on my feet and have done some preliminary rehearsal, I tell them, "Yes. EVERY day!"
'What you do?'
"I'm a doc..a wri..a..stan..er, I'malmostretired."
___
What? You wanted a story about elephants and coconut palms from Thailand? You can write this shit from ANYwhere, man. Don't matter where you are, Manny would say. You're going to be doing whatever you're doing.
Ok. So why not the tropics? Tom said Pine Ridge had two feet of snow.
Or maybe you wanted a story about Li An Song Nu Kyi, a fascinating figure, and boss of the plane production company after the shower caddy venture tanked, not because of market or sales, but because it wasn't fun anymore. It became quite tedious long before the 493rd caddy, the production cut-off.
People still ask, "You still have caddies?"
The plane production is in it's fourth year now, going on five, if I can get the crew back together. It's worse than a band. In a band, you've got egos and attitudes and people trippin' on themselves, and with a crew of Myanmar, you've got all of that, on top of the language problem and illegal immigration status. It's one exasperating episode after another.
The squadron's doing ok, though. We've got some really capable people on board in command positions, a little reckless at times, but they can think for themselves and get the job done.
uh.
uh.
Go on.
"Go on," she said, showing interest, but caught glancing up at the clock.
"I guess I'm eating into your lunch hour," I said, looking over my shoulder at the clock and letting her know I was paying attention to her eyes, the new VA shrink, undergraduate work at Purdue, six years med school at Indiana University, psychiatric internship at...I forget, Chicago or somewhere, doesn't matter, what mattered is that I know those schools, taught at one of 'em, played her hometown, Elkhart, in basketball, which she found remarkably interesting and strangely coincidental, there in her office, where she asked what I taught and was wondering about why I hadn't had an appointment in five years, and my comment, 'the intake nurses wanted me to report back on the new shrink.'*
"Oh,no," she said, dismissing my concern for her time. "We started late."
She'd been on the job for three weeks, the degrees conspicuously large on the wall. I told her they had a high rate of turnover in her position.
She didn't say anything, but let the air fall silent, a cue that I was the one to be doing the talking in that setting. She had already revealed too much, but could rationalize it as establishing a friendly but professional doctor/client rapport. I explained, "South Dakota winters are tough."
When our time was up, leaving her only 35 minutes for lunch, I told her I'd see her in six months. She seemed surprised. "You don't want another appointment for six months?" she asked.
"I'm going away," I replied. "Someplace warm...for my mental health. South Dakota winters are tough."
___
"That was a long time ago, man," my friend said in my kitchen, implying that it was time to let it go. Well, you could say that about Wounded Knee, the Holocaust, the Wells Fargo guy riding shotgun who got shot with an arrow in the teeth, the treaty, birth on Earth, or any other traumatic event.
Good news is, there's treatment, except for the Wells Fargo guy. Recent research says you tell your story, find new activities to plunge into, and surround yourself with friends and a network of support. Exercise and eat right. Go shopping.
Bad news is, when you're in that space, you don't feel like doing any of that shit.
Good news was, there was cardiac recovery. Bad news was, the study control group was already all hospitalized.
___
Am I doing any writing? Like, a book? Yes and no. A manuscript in the works? Well, there's the screenplay, 'Stinky Boy', and the talking medicinal plant story that has the potential of becoming a major motion picture and viral box office hit, and the Ho Chi Minh Trail series that I uh..uh
am working on, and of course, there's that Big One out there, you know, like a trophy fish, just waiting to be caught, or in my case, to be written, since you said 'writing', but, ah, everything in it's own due time, right?
No, it's not...none of this is actually ON PAPER...HA..but they're ideas, and ideas are good, right? ideas while walking down the beach.
- end
*"How is he?" the nurses asked excitedly in the lower hallway of Building A, their eyes alive with the prospect of new gossip, "the new shrink."
"He isn't a he," I told them. "She's a she. And she's young. Just finished up her internship."
.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Not of This World / Only A Matter of Time
12.28.09
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Stay gone from a place for six months, and you can expect just about anything to happen in your absence, the least of which is lizards and mice. Look what happened at Angkor Wat. The jungle prevailed for six centuries.
Same same here, land of a billion buddhas, south on the Isthmus of Kra, Tsunami-land, land of smiles.
They held the 5th year memorial ceremonies yesterday, the 26th, for all the lives lost here, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia. Prayers, candles, lanterns, sent to the sky, along with police whistles and a major traffic jam at the site of 'The Police Boat', a national monument now, swept in a full kilometer from the beach, just across from the Bang Niang Saturday fresh market, where thousands of memorial attendees, some bused in, joined the usual throng, and at least one motorcycle accident, from what I could see when I went through the funnel earlier with thirty other honda riders. It was madhouse enough that I stayed home and revisited the grief through photos on the net.
No visit from royalty, no helicopters, no big deal for many people, five years on, now. The Real 3-D World, war, no job, and the renewed holiday prospect of missing an airport ETA has overshadowed any remote concern for anyone not directly affected, such as, me, or the governor of the province.
Being directly affected, that's what got me here in the first place, and here I am, still here now. And when here it's 97 sizzling degrees at midday, and Copenhagen, Frankfurt, and Rapid City are in the deep freeze, that's what got a lot of those foreigners killed who came here for Christmas.
The Governor of the province? How would you like to preside over a disaster of unparalleled proportions? Whatshisname, Blanco, down in Katrina-land, the governor here in Tsunami-land, Bush in his two administrations, al-Bashir over in Darfur. No easy task.
Just saying it's a tough job. What are you going to do with all the bodies? It's already a crowded planet. If you're the guy, then you're the guy.
___
If you were wondering about 'The List' and why your name wasn't on it, or why it was so short, well, there's a longer list, much longer. How do you get on it? Easy, sort of. All you have to do is, visit me, pretty much, here or Slim Buttes, or pay the 499.99 for your aircraft.
That automatically puts you on The List, and you also, by virtue of being on The List, automatically become a member, a standing member of the Slim Buttes 335th Aviation Squadron.
In addition to the said aircraft and rank designation, 'Rookie/Cadet', you will also automatically receive the squadron bulletin, briefings, updates, and SITREPS (situaion reports) from the field, delivered live stream, text, cell, facebook, U Tube, blog, iphone, blackberry, and all other forms of automatic instant communication of insignificant minutiae to keep you and other third parties informed of detailed information you'd normally not be concerned with whatsoever.
___
Is It Just Me
Are my eyes just seeing things, or is it you, too?
The other night, Christmas Eve, I was riding my bike, a Honda 125, home from Carl's dinner party on the other side of the lake, down a rather spooky narrow lane, when in the headlight I caught a glimpse of something quite large, a big black...shape...darting back into the jungle.
Something like a big black square. A square with legs. I didn't get a real good look at it, because it was pitch black already, and I just caught it there in the light for a fraction of a second.
I kept going. I went right on by, but with a little bit of a shiver up my spine, if you know what I mean...like, I was thinking as I went by, 'what if whatever it was I saw would suddenly rush out of the jungle and...and...I don't know, knock me off the bike, or rip me to shreds or consume me in one bite or something.
Anyway, it could have been my imagination, but the shiver was real.
Well, ok, I could have dismissed all that, but today, just today, Claudia said to me and Damon, 'Did you see that?'
'Yeah,' said Damon.
"What?" I asked.
"Something up there in the trees. It's behind the leaves," she said, nodding across the road into the jungle at some higher branches, straining with concern to see it again. "A monkey or something," she said. "It was big."
I looked and didn't see anything. If it was big, then why couldn't you see it?
Damon said he saw it, too, out of the corner of his eye.
So it's not just me. Just like last summer, sitting there at my table with Bo and Misty and Tom and somebody else, I forget who, listening to Misty finishing up a ghost story when Bo described the same thing I had seen.
When he said that, it sent a shiver up my spine the same way that shape did the other night. Bo was talking about a...creature...he saw in the headlights on the side of the road, the same thing I had seen a month earlier and wasn't going to tell anyone about.
I was driving back to the rez from Colorado and had left so late it would have my arrival just at pre-dawn. In the hills just south of Chadron, NE when it was still black outside, I passed a dog standing on the side of the road that looked grey and mangy with a sort of humped back and long tail and sick eyes and long pointy ears, too long for a dog, and, hey, that's not a dog...that's a...a...must be a coyote...no...must be a...
What the hell WAS that thing? why didn't it move when I went by? didn't flinch. just stood there.
At first, I thought to turn around and return to check, drive by real slow, and then I got that shiver, gripped the wheel and stepped on the gas, thinking to put as much space as possible between me and whatever it was back there. "HELL, NO!" I thought, as a follow-up thought to going back there and checking.
It was identical to the animal Bo described. When I said he didn't move when I went by, Bo looked up slowly and said, "Yeahhh. Didn't move. Just stood there and looked at us when we went by. It was like something not of this world."
___
Only A Matter of Time
I knew it was only a matter of time. A person doesn't really own an idea. The ideas are out there. Floating around. Chances are, in fact, a high probability, if you 'came up with' an idea, somebody else somewhere has already thought of it, or is thinking of it at the same time as you, snatching it out of the atmosphere. Lookit the light bulb, aerial flight, the internal combustion engine, heliocentric theory, paranoid end-of-the-world delusion.
So, I had this idea, this idea that I was the only one in the world running a vintage bi-plane squadron, and cranking out planes at the rate of about twenty-five a year.
I know, that's slow, in production terms, far slower than Boeing, and that's what I told the Myanmar crew, that they were working too long on one plane, but over here, to save face, you can't just bitch people out the way we do in the States, like, 'in your face' is something that any American would know the meaning of.
So, the production story is something that will require some finessing, in addition to finding a new crew since most of them got deported, and trying to find the temperamental crew boss, Li An Song Nyu Ki, was like trying to hunt down a...a...Myanmar illegal immigrant in Thailand. People said they had 'seen her around some', but 'not lately'.
So, I've got to start over from scratch if I want to resume the production line, staying one step ahead of Wal-Mart by discontinuing the bi-plane Sopwiths and going exclusively with the tri-wing Fokker dual-plane mobiles.
And it appears I need to get going on it since I saw the cardboard cutout on the street in Bangkok while walking outside the Grand Palace with Rex, seeking out temple pants and buddha amulets.
"Hey. There's your plane," said Rex, pointing down at cut-out items at a street vendor. There it was, the bi-plane cut-out, along with a race car, a battle ship and an aircraft carrier. Yeah, they took the idea and saw how far they could run with it. Can you imagine an aircraft carrier cardboard cutout? How's it gonna float?
Sure enough, somebody had copied my idea, and I instantly thought of Li An's comment.
'Maybe I sell to Chinese', she had said in an eerily threatening email last summer. Looks like she carried through with it, and I wonder how much she got, although the model I saw was NO WHERE NEAR the quality of the 335th. You know how boxy and crude communist products are...except for that new sleek superfast train the Chinese just made.
'Thailand can copeee any thiiiing,' they will say. Rolex, Nike, DVDs, Adidas, your idea. The weird thing is, they will put up the same product right next door. So there it was, right on the street in Bangkok, my idea. Except for the price differential (they're selling theirs for 100 Thai Baht, about three bucks), they have no advantage over my one-of-a-kind, made in the USA (except for those produced here), and two other reasons I can't think of right now that makes the $499.99 asking price worth it.
"See?" I said to Rex, while flipping through the cripple's inventory. "They're all the same."
"You hab blue?" I asked the vendor.
"No," he replied. "All same same. Only hab Led."
I could see the flash, the light bulb go on in his eyes. Blue. 'Now, there's an idea.'
___
Mr., who got beat up at his grand opening 'Dead Man's Party' on Christmas Eve, was earlier running around saying he was two days behind schedule.
"I've got a million things to do," he said. "Got to go get supplies for everybody's nostrils and everybody's lungs," he had said.
Turned out that things became heated and out of control during the early hours of Christmas morning, and whaddaya know, Mr. became my first patient this year.
My second patient could have been the large German lady, when she and her husband pulled up on two bikes in front of the Honda shop. After stopping, she failed to remove her feet from the pegs and put them down, thus, as gravity would have it, fell over with the bike, and appeared to be fantastically stupid. I thought I was the only one to do that, but again, it isn't just me.
- end
.
KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Stay gone from a place for six months, and you can expect just about anything to happen in your absence, the least of which is lizards and mice. Look what happened at Angkor Wat. The jungle prevailed for six centuries.
Same same here, land of a billion buddhas, south on the Isthmus of Kra, Tsunami-land, land of smiles.
They held the 5th year memorial ceremonies yesterday, the 26th, for all the lives lost here, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia. Prayers, candles, lanterns, sent to the sky, along with police whistles and a major traffic jam at the site of 'The Police Boat', a national monument now, swept in a full kilometer from the beach, just across from the Bang Niang Saturday fresh market, where thousands of memorial attendees, some bused in, joined the usual throng, and at least one motorcycle accident, from what I could see when I went through the funnel earlier with thirty other honda riders. It was madhouse enough that I stayed home and revisited the grief through photos on the net.
No visit from royalty, no helicopters, no big deal for many people, five years on, now. The Real 3-D World, war, no job, and the renewed holiday prospect of missing an airport ETA has overshadowed any remote concern for anyone not directly affected, such as, me, or the governor of the province.
Being directly affected, that's what got me here in the first place, and here I am, still here now. And when here it's 97 sizzling degrees at midday, and Copenhagen, Frankfurt, and Rapid City are in the deep freeze, that's what got a lot of those foreigners killed who came here for Christmas.
The Governor of the province? How would you like to preside over a disaster of unparalleled proportions? Whatshisname, Blanco, down in Katrina-land, the governor here in Tsunami-land, Bush in his two administrations, al-Bashir over in Darfur. No easy task.
Just saying it's a tough job. What are you going to do with all the bodies? It's already a crowded planet. If you're the guy, then you're the guy.
___
If you were wondering about 'The List' and why your name wasn't on it, or why it was so short, well, there's a longer list, much longer. How do you get on it? Easy, sort of. All you have to do is, visit me, pretty much, here or Slim Buttes, or pay the 499.99 for your aircraft.
That automatically puts you on The List, and you also, by virtue of being on The List, automatically become a member, a standing member of the Slim Buttes 335th Aviation Squadron.
In addition to the said aircraft and rank designation, 'Rookie/Cadet', you will also automatically receive the squadron bulletin, briefings, updates, and SITREPS (situaion reports) from the field, delivered live stream, text, cell, facebook, U Tube, blog, iphone, blackberry, and all other forms of automatic instant communication of insignificant minutiae to keep you and other third parties informed of detailed information you'd normally not be concerned with whatsoever.
___
Is It Just Me
Are my eyes just seeing things, or is it you, too?
The other night, Christmas Eve, I was riding my bike, a Honda 125, home from Carl's dinner party on the other side of the lake, down a rather spooky narrow lane, when in the headlight I caught a glimpse of something quite large, a big black...shape...darting back into the jungle.
Something like a big black square. A square with legs. I didn't get a real good look at it, because it was pitch black already, and I just caught it there in the light for a fraction of a second.
I kept going. I went right on by, but with a little bit of a shiver up my spine, if you know what I mean...like, I was thinking as I went by, 'what if whatever it was I saw would suddenly rush out of the jungle and...and...I don't know, knock me off the bike, or rip me to shreds or consume me in one bite or something.
Anyway, it could have been my imagination, but the shiver was real.
Well, ok, I could have dismissed all that, but today, just today, Claudia said to me and Damon, 'Did you see that?'
'Yeah,' said Damon.
"What?" I asked.
"Something up there in the trees. It's behind the leaves," she said, nodding across the road into the jungle at some higher branches, straining with concern to see it again. "A monkey or something," she said. "It was big."
I looked and didn't see anything. If it was big, then why couldn't you see it?
Damon said he saw it, too, out of the corner of his eye.
So it's not just me. Just like last summer, sitting there at my table with Bo and Misty and Tom and somebody else, I forget who, listening to Misty finishing up a ghost story when Bo described the same thing I had seen.
When he said that, it sent a shiver up my spine the same way that shape did the other night. Bo was talking about a...creature...he saw in the headlights on the side of the road, the same thing I had seen a month earlier and wasn't going to tell anyone about.
I was driving back to the rez from Colorado and had left so late it would have my arrival just at pre-dawn. In the hills just south of Chadron, NE when it was still black outside, I passed a dog standing on the side of the road that looked grey and mangy with a sort of humped back and long tail and sick eyes and long pointy ears, too long for a dog, and, hey, that's not a dog...that's a...a...must be a coyote...no...must be a...
What the hell WAS that thing? why didn't it move when I went by? didn't flinch. just stood there.
At first, I thought to turn around and return to check, drive by real slow, and then I got that shiver, gripped the wheel and stepped on the gas, thinking to put as much space as possible between me and whatever it was back there. "HELL, NO!" I thought, as a follow-up thought to going back there and checking.
It was identical to the animal Bo described. When I said he didn't move when I went by, Bo looked up slowly and said, "Yeahhh. Didn't move. Just stood there and looked at us when we went by. It was like something not of this world."
___
Only A Matter of Time
I knew it was only a matter of time. A person doesn't really own an idea. The ideas are out there. Floating around. Chances are, in fact, a high probability, if you 'came up with' an idea, somebody else somewhere has already thought of it, or is thinking of it at the same time as you, snatching it out of the atmosphere. Lookit the light bulb, aerial flight, the internal combustion engine, heliocentric theory, paranoid end-of-the-world delusion.
So, I had this idea, this idea that I was the only one in the world running a vintage bi-plane squadron, and cranking out planes at the rate of about twenty-five a year.
I know, that's slow, in production terms, far slower than Boeing, and that's what I told the Myanmar crew, that they were working too long on one plane, but over here, to save face, you can't just bitch people out the way we do in the States, like, 'in your face' is something that any American would know the meaning of.
So, the production story is something that will require some finessing, in addition to finding a new crew since most of them got deported, and trying to find the temperamental crew boss, Li An Song Nyu Ki, was like trying to hunt down a...a...Myanmar illegal immigrant in Thailand. People said they had 'seen her around some', but 'not lately'.
So, I've got to start over from scratch if I want to resume the production line, staying one step ahead of Wal-Mart by discontinuing the bi-plane Sopwiths and going exclusively with the tri-wing Fokker dual-plane mobiles.
And it appears I need to get going on it since I saw the cardboard cutout on the street in Bangkok while walking outside the Grand Palace with Rex, seeking out temple pants and buddha amulets.
"Hey. There's your plane," said Rex, pointing down at cut-out items at a street vendor. There it was, the bi-plane cut-out, along with a race car, a battle ship and an aircraft carrier. Yeah, they took the idea and saw how far they could run with it. Can you imagine an aircraft carrier cardboard cutout? How's it gonna float?
Sure enough, somebody had copied my idea, and I instantly thought of Li An's comment.
'Maybe I sell to Chinese', she had said in an eerily threatening email last summer. Looks like she carried through with it, and I wonder how much she got, although the model I saw was NO WHERE NEAR the quality of the 335th. You know how boxy and crude communist products are...except for that new sleek superfast train the Chinese just made.
'Thailand can copeee any thiiiing,' they will say. Rolex, Nike, DVDs, Adidas, your idea. The weird thing is, they will put up the same product right next door. So there it was, right on the street in Bangkok, my idea. Except for the price differential (they're selling theirs for 100 Thai Baht, about three bucks), they have no advantage over my one-of-a-kind, made in the USA (except for those produced here), and two other reasons I can't think of right now that makes the $499.99 asking price worth it.
"See?" I said to Rex, while flipping through the cripple's inventory. "They're all the same."
"You hab blue?" I asked the vendor.
"No," he replied. "All same same. Only hab Led."
I could see the flash, the light bulb go on in his eyes. Blue. 'Now, there's an idea.'
___
Mr., who got beat up at his grand opening 'Dead Man's Party' on Christmas Eve, was earlier running around saying he was two days behind schedule.
"I've got a million things to do," he said. "Got to go get supplies for everybody's nostrils and everybody's lungs," he had said.
Turned out that things became heated and out of control during the early hours of Christmas morning, and whaddaya know, Mr. became my first patient this year.
My second patient could have been the large German lady, when she and her husband pulled up on two bikes in front of the Honda shop. After stopping, she failed to remove her feet from the pegs and put them down, thus, as gravity would have it, fell over with the bike, and appeared to be fantastically stupid. I thought I was the only one to do that, but again, it isn't just me.
- end
.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Is It Worth It?
Slim Buttes
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
10.09
Ever think, ‘Is he talking to everybody… or just me?’ The minister, the swami, the shaman, the medicine man, the public address at the train station, the airport. Yes and no.
What are they worth?
Is it worth it? I don’t know. It’s all relative, I suppose, entirely dependent upon the eye of the beholder, like everything.
Four ninety-nine ninety-nine might at first appear to be a bit exorbitant until you reflect upon the ways you’ve pissed away five hundred bucks in the past.
Yeah, just think about it for a moment.
Ok? Given that light, by comparison, a gift that’s going to keep on giving, down through the generations perhaps, each recipient automatically becoming a pilot and enrolled member of the Slim Buttes 335th Aviation Detachment, seems to be well worth my asking price of fourninetynineninetynine.
Suddenly, the trailer was full the other night, people pulling up left and right, with Digger and Devin* up from Colorado, bringing the truck I’ve been awaiting all summer, and Bo and Misty and Kassel and Manuel around the table, the conversation turning to SitReps, Situation Reports, conditions of aircraft and props and wing struts and landing gear and promotions.
It was confusing, with several excited conversations going on at once, and we went over the four reasons again that justify the asking price.
“Made in America, that’s one,” I said, holding up one finger, Misty looking up from her scissor-carving, the only one who seemed to be paying attention.
“Limited edition,” I said, flashing two fingers. “That makes it a collector’s item.”
“Uh…what’s the third?” I asked.
Misty just looked up, didn’t say anything. “One-of-a-kind,” said Digger.
“Right. One-of-a-kind, each individually unique. What’s the fourth, Bo?”
We couldn’t think of a fourth reason right then, because too many other thoughts were flying through the air and the conversation went five, six other places, but there is one, a fourth. I’ll come up with it later.
Slim Buttes, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
10.09
Six, Seven Days Later
How long can you play out an airplane story?
I don’t know, but really, other than landscaping, the Lord’s Work, and the L.A. Times crossword puzzle, it’s the only thing going on. If you’ve been here in October, you know what I’m talking about. Snowed last night, artic hawk pushing down our necks, mice coming inside.
Didn’t bother going to bi-weekly sweat lodge, even right after six of ‘the boys’ stopped in here for coffee, asking me if I was coming. I told them I was, a lie. Too cold. Too windy. Too dark. Stayed here and fed the stove.
It’s all coming back to me now. ‘You’ve gotta do more than just clock in, clock out. You can’t be just sittin’ around, waiting for slots to open up.’ Like that? If you see it in a movie script, you’ll know where it came from. Like, five years after it’s creation, people in mainstream media, print, televised, and live, are using ‘a whole ‘nuther’ as an acceptable usage of grammar, as in, ‘that’s a whole ‘nuther ball game.’ Notice? The phrase ‘went viral’ after Nina Tottenburg used it on NPR. Maybe I already told you.
You heard enough of ‘uptick’ and ‘ratchet up’ yet? Those aren’t mine…some other yoyo’s…economic forecasters. We’ll all be sick of it soon enough. ‘Outside the box’? When they say that…‘think outside the box’, are they talking about, ‘beyond your tv set’?
__
Made in America (except for those made in Thailand, of course), One-of-a-kind, Limited Edition, uh…there’s a fourth reason.
There’s a fourth reason why fourninetynineninetynine is a good asking price. You gotta think of more than just cardboard cutout and toothpicks. You gotta remember those girls. Each one of ‘em has a family. Each one of them has kids. All of them have momma go to hospital, papa sick.
They closed up shop on me, the Myanmar crew, stopping the production at eighty-six. Apparently, they all up and walked out, leaving me with a lot of explaining to do. You got the gist of Li An’s letter. Li An, Li An Song Nu Kyi, the crew boss. Maybe you met her. A communication breakdown, a language barrier. We’ll get things up and running when I get back.
Anyway, with two planes going out to N. Carolina last week to Rick and Pat, the folks from the permaculture workshop, one yesterday to aviation enthusiast Gene at ‘Gene’s Machine’ shop in Chadron, and two more last night to Stanley Good Voice Elk and his 12 yr. old son, Garrett, the on-location, in-the-field squadron strength has dropped precariously to eight, our lowest number of active duty in four years.
You can do the math. Eight from eighty-six is what? Seventy-five? That’s how many pilots are out there, my friends. Active pilots, most of them still flying.
“You know anybody else who’s doing this?”** I asked, looking at Stan and Lupe’. They shook their heads no. Matthew, Warren, Garrett, whatever his name was, was the perfect target candidate for rookie/cadet when he came in here last night with his dad and six of ‘the boys’, shaking off the shivers and huddling around the wood stove.
Twelve years old, the perfect age. All the men sat down over coffee, but he stood, wandering around and staring at all the aircraft.
“You want to join?” I asked him. “You become a pilot in the Slim Buttes 335th Aviation Squadron. Take your pick.”
I explained to him all the ins and outs of rank and pay grade and combat missions and everything…the rookie pilot orientation, y’know, but I don’t think he caught any of it, being absorbed in first one plane, then another, and finally settling on a green tri-wing with guns.
Stanley took one, too, for his younger boy, four years old. “Remember, it’s not a toy,” I told them. “Keep it up, flying. If you don’t, next thing, you’ll be in the maintenance hanger, talking about needing new landing gear, new tail, new prop.”
Some of you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Chachee Esparza, a sumo-size 14 shoe, here with his dad, Lupe’, sat here and asked me if I assembled the planes from a kit. “You make these from a kit?” he asked. Tom and Jack Red Cloud laughed at his question as I recoiled in disbelief.
“What, from Wal-Mart?” I asked. “No, man. These are all hand-crafted, one-of-a-kind,” I told him.
“Cut’s ‘em out of cardboard,” said Tom, making a scissor-cutting motion with his fingers. “Made in America,” he added. “Fourninetynineninetynine.”
He went on to explain to how we, er, the Germans, figured out how to shoot through the propeller, and everybody understood triggers and camshafts, here on the rez. After that, they left, saying see ya later.
The 335th. That’s a poor man’s reservation-version Skull & Bones Society. You don’t have to be a Yale grad to become a member. A twelve-year old could be your wing man. A six-year old could be your flight leader.
end
____
*Devin, stopped in CO one night by a cop who inquired about the four-foot bong in the back seat. Devin told him it was a dijeridu. “I know a bong when I see one,” said the cop. “No. It’s a dijeridu,” Devin insisted.
“Ok,” said the cop. “If it’s a dijeridu, then play it for me.”
Devin took the bong and proceeded to WA WAAAA, WOO WOO, WA WAAAAA, and the cop let him go.
**the 4th reason.
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
10.09
Ever think, ‘Is he talking to everybody… or just me?’ The minister, the swami, the shaman, the medicine man, the public address at the train station, the airport. Yes and no.
What are they worth?
Is it worth it? I don’t know. It’s all relative, I suppose, entirely dependent upon the eye of the beholder, like everything.
Four ninety-nine ninety-nine might at first appear to be a bit exorbitant until you reflect upon the ways you’ve pissed away five hundred bucks in the past.
Yeah, just think about it for a moment.
Ok? Given that light, by comparison, a gift that’s going to keep on giving, down through the generations perhaps, each recipient automatically becoming a pilot and enrolled member of the Slim Buttes 335th Aviation Detachment, seems to be well worth my asking price of fourninetynineninetynine.
Suddenly, the trailer was full the other night, people pulling up left and right, with Digger and Devin* up from Colorado, bringing the truck I’ve been awaiting all summer, and Bo and Misty and Kassel and Manuel around the table, the conversation turning to SitReps, Situation Reports, conditions of aircraft and props and wing struts and landing gear and promotions.
It was confusing, with several excited conversations going on at once, and we went over the four reasons again that justify the asking price.
“Made in America, that’s one,” I said, holding up one finger, Misty looking up from her scissor-carving, the only one who seemed to be paying attention.
“Limited edition,” I said, flashing two fingers. “That makes it a collector’s item.”
“Uh…what’s the third?” I asked.
Misty just looked up, didn’t say anything. “One-of-a-kind,” said Digger.
“Right. One-of-a-kind, each individually unique. What’s the fourth, Bo?”
We couldn’t think of a fourth reason right then, because too many other thoughts were flying through the air and the conversation went five, six other places, but there is one, a fourth. I’ll come up with it later.
Slim Buttes, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
10.09
Six, Seven Days Later
How long can you play out an airplane story?
I don’t know, but really, other than landscaping, the Lord’s Work, and the L.A. Times crossword puzzle, it’s the only thing going on. If you’ve been here in October, you know what I’m talking about. Snowed last night, artic hawk pushing down our necks, mice coming inside.
Didn’t bother going to bi-weekly sweat lodge, even right after six of ‘the boys’ stopped in here for coffee, asking me if I was coming. I told them I was, a lie. Too cold. Too windy. Too dark. Stayed here and fed the stove.
It’s all coming back to me now. ‘You’ve gotta do more than just clock in, clock out. You can’t be just sittin’ around, waiting for slots to open up.’ Like that? If you see it in a movie script, you’ll know where it came from. Like, five years after it’s creation, people in mainstream media, print, televised, and live, are using ‘a whole ‘nuther’ as an acceptable usage of grammar, as in, ‘that’s a whole ‘nuther ball game.’ Notice? The phrase ‘went viral’ after Nina Tottenburg used it on NPR. Maybe I already told you.
You heard enough of ‘uptick’ and ‘ratchet up’ yet? Those aren’t mine…some other yoyo’s…economic forecasters. We’ll all be sick of it soon enough. ‘Outside the box’? When they say that…‘think outside the box’, are they talking about, ‘beyond your tv set’?
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Made in America (except for those made in Thailand, of course), One-of-a-kind, Limited Edition, uh…there’s a fourth reason.
There’s a fourth reason why fourninetynineninetynine is a good asking price. You gotta think of more than just cardboard cutout and toothpicks. You gotta remember those girls. Each one of ‘em has a family. Each one of them has kids. All of them have momma go to hospital, papa sick.
They closed up shop on me, the Myanmar crew, stopping the production at eighty-six. Apparently, they all up and walked out, leaving me with a lot of explaining to do. You got the gist of Li An’s letter. Li An, Li An Song Nu Kyi, the crew boss. Maybe you met her. A communication breakdown, a language barrier. We’ll get things up and running when I get back.
Anyway, with two planes going out to N. Carolina last week to Rick and Pat, the folks from the permaculture workshop, one yesterday to aviation enthusiast Gene at ‘Gene’s Machine’ shop in Chadron, and two more last night to Stanley Good Voice Elk and his 12 yr. old son, Garrett, the on-location, in-the-field squadron strength has dropped precariously to eight, our lowest number of active duty in four years.
You can do the math. Eight from eighty-six is what? Seventy-five? That’s how many pilots are out there, my friends. Active pilots, most of them still flying.
“You know anybody else who’s doing this?”** I asked, looking at Stan and Lupe’. They shook their heads no. Matthew, Warren, Garrett, whatever his name was, was the perfect target candidate for rookie/cadet when he came in here last night with his dad and six of ‘the boys’, shaking off the shivers and huddling around the wood stove.
Twelve years old, the perfect age. All the men sat down over coffee, but he stood, wandering around and staring at all the aircraft.
“You want to join?” I asked him. “You become a pilot in the Slim Buttes 335th Aviation Squadron. Take your pick.”
I explained to him all the ins and outs of rank and pay grade and combat missions and everything…the rookie pilot orientation, y’know, but I don’t think he caught any of it, being absorbed in first one plane, then another, and finally settling on a green tri-wing with guns.
Stanley took one, too, for his younger boy, four years old. “Remember, it’s not a toy,” I told them. “Keep it up, flying. If you don’t, next thing, you’ll be in the maintenance hanger, talking about needing new landing gear, new tail, new prop.”
Some of you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Chachee Esparza, a sumo-size 14 shoe, here with his dad, Lupe’, sat here and asked me if I assembled the planes from a kit. “You make these from a kit?” he asked. Tom and Jack Red Cloud laughed at his question as I recoiled in disbelief.
“What, from Wal-Mart?” I asked. “No, man. These are all hand-crafted, one-of-a-kind,” I told him.
“Cut’s ‘em out of cardboard,” said Tom, making a scissor-cutting motion with his fingers. “Made in America,” he added. “Fourninetynineninetynine.”
He went on to explain to how we, er, the Germans, figured out how to shoot through the propeller, and everybody understood triggers and camshafts, here on the rez. After that, they left, saying see ya later.
The 335th. That’s a poor man’s reservation-version Skull & Bones Society. You don’t have to be a Yale grad to become a member. A twelve-year old could be your wing man. A six-year old could be your flight leader.
end
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*Devin, stopped in CO one night by a cop who inquired about the four-foot bong in the back seat. Devin told him it was a dijeridu. “I know a bong when I see one,” said the cop. “No. It’s a dijeridu,” Devin insisted.
“Ok,” said the cop. “If it’s a dijeridu, then play it for me.”
Devin took the bong and proceeded to WA WAAAA, WOO WOO, WA WAAAAA, and the cop let him go.
**the 4th reason.
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