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The Late, Great Doctor of Journalism
Hunter S. Thompson - Rest in Mayhem! |
“Hope you got your things together,
Hope you are quite prepared to die,
Looks like we’re in for nasty weather,
One eye is taken for an eye.”
-Credence Clearwater Revival
Faces of the Doomed
The faces of the doomed stare back at me when I am on my morning walks with the dog. They aren’t always there on the physical plane, but right now they are: born to the slaughter, born without choice or possibility. They stand there on the other side of the barbed wire fence, watching suspiciously as I chase down impossible dreams.
Introduction
My forearms burn. My hands are wretched, mangled claws. Every time I stand up or lean over my back screams out in agony. This is my penance – the result of yanking at star thistle for several hours this evening, after getting off of work. Star thistle is the scourge of the Earth – a vicious, invasive weed that flattens tires and spikes boot heels. Allowed to go to seed, it will spread like some malodorous infection and take over acres of land in a season or two. It must be removed – all of it, every last thistle; and I should have been taking care of this creeping bastard of a weed over the course of the three day weekend, Memorial Day weekend, that just came and went in the bat of an eye.
All three day weekends go by in a blur when you work in a job that barely stimulates, but this one went by even faster as a result of a ridiculous challenge I decided to embark upon. A young woman I know has been stating that she is the “Hunter S. Thompson of the North State,” based on the fact that she posted a paragraph on FaceBook about sneaking beers into, and smoking weed from an apple at, the Fair. (Seriously, as if she is the first person to ever get wasted at the Fair – please) I could not let this stand, and so threw down the gauntlet of challenge. We agreed to use the weekend for gathering material, and then to write about our various exploits, the finished writing to determine who the real “Hunter S. Thompson of the North State” in fact, is. I know, as I said, ridiculous. The idea that there could ever be another Hunter is laughable. The world needed Hunter S. Thompson, the mad genius, the blazing poet, the inventor of “Gonzo” journalism; but the world doesn't need another HST; and it certainly doesn't need pale imitators who believe because they get drunk, or stoned, and write about it, that suddenly they exist on the same plane as the freakish visionary who lived on Owl Farm, blasted away with large caliber, automatic weaponry in the middle of the night, blew up tankards filled with fuel, and slept with a keg of TNT in his basement. Who are we with our puny camp fires, our cheap whiskey, and canned beer from Milwaukee?
But a challenge is a challenge, and I intend to win this one.
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| HST guns down a hapless Underwood |
HST Ramblings
Thompson wrote his most famous, and arguably his most endearing work, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” in 1971, the year I was born. In that story he describes laying a “60’s style drug trip” on Las Vegas in the 1970’s – after the idealism and naivety of the psychedelic 1960’s had been firmly and definitely usurped by speed-fueled chaos and violence. He describes the 1970’s as a very ugly era in American history. Maybe the 70’s were similar to the times we live in now – hard economics with a period of seemingly endless war layered underneath. We’ve had troops fighting overseas since November of 2001, in Iraq since early 2003, and now, in the year 2011, troops are killing and dying in our name in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and, most recently, Libya. Our President, who rode into office on a sweeping sentimentality of peace and prosperity, has been unable to deliver on either count, and we find ourselves entangled in what appears to be a spreading, sucking whirlpool of economic despair and militaristic carnage.
Have we been steadily navigating away from the peace and beauty of the 1960’s? It feels so impossible now, and I know, myself, I hold those who came before us responsible for these failings. They had it, it was right there – nothing left to do but close the fist around it and hold on. Instead, the physical temptations overtook the spiritual dimensions of the movement. LSD gave way to speed, free love to pornographic cinema, peace lost its tenuous grasp and we plunged headlong and lustily into war; having soared so close to our spiritual apex, we collectively fell backwards and into our most animal tendencies.
But of course no individual, or even individual generation can be completely taken to task for our comprehensive failings.
Missives on the American Dream
Every new wave of youth likes to believe they are the doomed generation – that they’re the first to discovery debauchery and alcohol, to live with a sense of fatalism, the first to partake in bad behavior, and the first to discover their genitals (do they realize how they got here?). It’s the floundering of youth and the fatal flaw in collective wisdom; by the time you’re old enough to take advantage of all the collected knowledge, it’s usually too late to do anything with it.
The American Dream – Same as it Never Was
Here in America people have likely been talking about the death of the American Dream since the concept was derived. The American Dream is no more dead or alive than it ever has been; and life has always been balanced on the precipice of death. The American Dream is sticky – the name hints at the difficulties in trying to track down the damned beast. It is not a reality, a gift, a right, or a given – it is a dream; which means first and foremost, you have to dream the thing up! Then and only then can you actually go out and grab it. And so for many years, most of our lives in many cases, and sometimes never – the dream remains formless and ethereal. It is a frustrating mist that slips through our fingers because we can’t properly materialize it. Eventually, in time, if you’re lucky, the thing may finally take form. And then you’ve got to act with haste and precision before it weakens again. Even then, even after you have sunk your claws into the dream, it won’t last forever. It’s a dream, remember?
Over the Memorial Day weekend I got a taste of it – opportunity presented itself and I lunged and struck, and drew blood. In a bizarre amalgamation of events, on Friday I met with a couple whose wedding I will be officiating, and followed that up by watching a wrestling match between the forces of good and evil in the form of the “Born Again Becky Sagers” versus “WitchDick” at the Origami Lounge: wine versus whiskey, up-tempo raps versus down and dirty metal vamps. The night was a sonic swirl of pounding beats and snarling feedback, attitude and Armageddon – all pushed along by a variety of different, potent beverages. I won’t declare a winner, but Jeremiah of the Becky Sagers did confess to me that he was considering leaving town – that’s all I’m saying and I may have said too much.
A Harrowing Shot up Blood Alley
The show ran long, as they almost always do, and my earlier plans to stop and meet a friend for a coffee or a soft drink at Duffy’s were waylaid by the treacherous realities of time. It was quarter of three when I got into my truck and left the Origami Lounge. The beers, wine, and whiskey had taken their effect, and, while I wasn’t completely twisted, the controls of my vehicle were starting to feel slightly spongy. No rest for the weary or the wicked on this weird spring morning; I guided her down the side streets to Highway 99 North and put my foot to the pedal.
Once clear of the city limits I relaxed. It was late, and there wasn’t another set of headlights anywhere in sight. If I could stay awake and keep the truck’s rubber tires on the asphalt I would be fine. I made use of a technique I’d learned years ago when making a 45 minute commute between Chico and Colusa. The economy was in another one of its fits; that’s nothing new to us here in the North State, and I’d been maneuvered by the hands of fate into a pitiful job in an Indian casino – pushing a nickel plated cart filled with small change through the gaming room and filling up slot machines that had been emptied in the process of paying out some negligible jackpot. The job paid $8 an hour and, sadly, I was good at it. As a result they schedule me for all the busy shifts – from 6 o’clock in the evening until 4 in the morning I worked Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sundays in that tobacco soaked, cranked out, pit of human despair and wreckage. It was a three-month sentence until I could find better work (anything was better) and the best part of the job was the drive home. The trick I learned was to ignore the lanes. With one eye open, at 4 in the morning, you could straddle the center divide. This afforded two benefits: it was easier to navigate, which allowed greater speed, and it also gave a better chance to avoid the countless rodents and mammals that were attempting to get from one side of the road to the other all through the days and nights.
And so I took advantage of this scrap of knowledge, gleaned from a job I hated, working for fools and greed-driven miscreants in a corner of the world God must surely have overlooked or ignored – a cut-rate Sodom and Gomorrah, devoid of titillation. Any sexuality in the place was being poured into those shining, beckoning machines. It was a beautiful, grotesque testimony to the power of lust and madness over reason. Reason – that’s the greatest joke anyone ever came up with. The brain deceives us with the illusion of reason.
But this trip was not meant to be a reminder of that hatred and oppression – this was a freedom ride. The Friday night musical dueling was only a precursor of events that were yet to unfold. The truck and I shot up the highway like a cannonball, hurtling unseeing towards the inevitable. This was Memorial Day Weekend Goddammit! This was a celebration of what it means to be an American in the year 2011, already a decade and a year longer than we had any right or hope to expect we'd exist.
Inside Chico, Highway 99 is a divided highway with two lanes pointing north, and two heading south. The highway is relatively isolated by barriers of silvery barked sycamore trees and towering plumes of Oleanders. Beyond the city, the highway narrows to a single lane in each direction – cars and trucks heading opposite ways pass only feet from one another at combined speeds of 150 miles per hour. The highway slices through small farms, orchards, and grazing land. Sparse, barbed-wire fences nominally shield the wild-life and feral animals from the road. This is progress as seen through our collective American eyes – a straight, flat speed burn over rough land, riddled with knolls and creeks. Never mind the river of blood and carnage the highways generate; not only the horrific wrecks that mangle body and brain, and steal life, but also in the countless creatures simply trying to make their ways home: raccoons, squirrels, cats making their rounds, dogs running from booming thunder claps. The highway swallows them all and leaves them sprawled and lifeless on the shoulders, or, if they are able to crawl their dying carcasses away from the scene of impact, rotting in the knee-high grass – the scene of their deaths evidenced by the red-headed buzzards and the sharp-beaked ravens who tear at the drying entrails.
The spirits of these doomed beasts swirl around my vehicle as I make the harrowing streak North – one eye closed, one hand on the wheel, my arm out the window and the music blasting loud tuned into the classic rock station: AC/DC, Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath. The wind, the cool night air, and the pounding music are managing to keep me awake – only 30 minutes and then I can piss in the bushes before staggering inside and collapsing into bed; not before a quick glass of pink wine though – for whatever, reason I have no idea. We’re on the train now – there is no stopping until sometime around Monday. Around 60 or 70 hours to go.
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| Me with diesel fuel - ready to burn |
“But our trip was different. It was a classic affirmation of everything right and true and decent in the national character. It was a gross, physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country – but only for those with true grit. And we were chock full of that.”
-HST
Seeing a Man about a Tractor
Trish went into work on Saturday morning and then I waited a half hour after she was gone. I had some business to conduct. We got a line on a tractor for the farm – an old Ford NAA (pronounced: “N – double-A”). It was down at a tractor dealership on the main drag. I am not a great negotiator, but I prepared myself to wheel and deal. The money was pulled from a tertiary savings account – one we squirreled money into, and tried to forget about. They were asking $2500 for it – and I was going to offer $2000. I dressed with purpose – neat black pants, a shirt that I imagined a hard-working, but shrewd and attuned man might wear. I pulled on black cowboy boots. I took the money and slid twenty folded hundred dollar bills into my front pocket – the other five went into the back pocket. Then I left the house and made the ten minute walk down our street and then right onto the Main street. I convinced myself about halfway down that I was assuredly going to be mugged by one of the tweakers that make their way from the gas station to the trailer park in a wavering, sporadic flow. But I made it to the dealership, and then I found my way to the office. I took a deep breath and pulled open the tinted glass front door, ready to take on whomever I might encounter inside. I pictured a squinting, gnawing personality waiting to put the screws to a naïve rube like me – a rocker from the suburbs moving up to the country. Oh I was ripe for the picking, and now sure I would be fleeced.
I stepped inside and found the lone office denizen. A young kid, maybe twenty one, twenty two years old, with thick-rimmed eye-glasses and wide eyes said “hello” and welcomed me in. I told him I was interest in the NAA. He looked up the price on a computer and said they were asking $2500. I made my best move: “Would you take $2000?” He looked at me, frowned a little. “Well... it's on commission so I'll have to ask the owner.” I waited for him to make a move towards the phone but he sat right as he was. “Can I get your phone number? I'll get a hold of him before the end of the day.” The end of the day? Would I be able to get the tractor today? After all, the dealership would be closed on Sunday, and again on Monday, for Memorial Day – and this was exactly why I needed the tractor! I nearly panicked and offered him the whole $2500, then caught myself. I wrote my number down on a sticky note, and my name, and handed it over to this kid, who introduced himself then as “Michael.”
I left with the entire $2500 still split between my pockets. I decided to take the back way home, down Aromoyo Road and over a fence into our east pasture, the one on the other side of the creek from the house; then made my way along the length of the property. The rest of the day I waited, not drinking in case I may have to resume negotiations on the 1953 Ford. I worked inside, vacuuming, cleaning dishes, staying close to the phone. Trish came home around 4. I was getting nervous – starting to assume that it wasn't going to happen – not today anyway. It finally rang at around 4:45 – the business was scheduled to close at 5:00. Michael's kind voice: “The owner says $2300 is as low as he can go.”
“I'll take it,” I was excited by the prospect of having the tractor in my possession: “Can I get it today, right now?” He told me to hurry.
Trish gave me a ride down there and dropped me off – I'd be driving the tractor home or walking and that was the way I wanted it. I counted out the bills and slid them across the counter and Michael wrote me out a bill of sale, with a dated “PAID” stamp. He slid the bill to me and I took it, examined it quickly (there wasn't much to it), then folded it twice and tucked it into my recently emptied pockets.
Then we went out to the tractor. He tried to fire it up, but the battery was dead. We wired a couple of extension cords and plugged in a battery charger, and then when Michael pressed the ignition button, the engine would turn over, but it wouldn't catch. He called the owner of the dealership on a cel phone and explained the situation. “Choke?” I heard him say and then we both located it, a pull rod with a threaded end where a metal hoop should have been fastened. Michael pulled the rod out a few times and then tried the ignition again. It fired right up, the simple engine steadily chugging. He let it run for a few minutes, and then drove it out of the dealership's yard, one wheel climbing over a heap of gravel and forcing a sharp turn to the right. He maneuvered the tractor until it stood between the front gates, pointed down towards the road. I took over from there, pressing in the clutch and dropping it into gear. I could only find first and second, and as a result it was a slow ride home; but there wasn't far to go.
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| "New" Tractor - 1953 Ford NAA |
I drove it in our own front gate, then made a lap of the front half of the property – driving the old Ford down and along the creek, and then back up into the yard closer to the house. Later I would test the front loader by attempting to move a couple of sets of old automobile axles that are resting in the lower yard. Then I used it to move some of the larger pieces of wood I was going to need to build a proper Memorial Day fire. It was a good day, and I was pleased as I backed the tractor (since named Easy-E, you know, N – Double-A) onto the cement bad before our garage. I was feeling more prepared for our Sunday celebration – the challenge, the gathering of material.
The Indie 500 is UnAmerican
The Sunday before Memorial Day was a day dedicated to high-speed motorcars turning laps in stadiums – around asphalt tracks. The Indianapolis 500 ran early in the day. In this race they run the formula cars – the low slung, aerodynamic speedsters that look like a cross between rockets and build it yourself airplanes, with wide tires in the back and narrower steering ones on the front. The cars achieve incredible speeds – well over two hundred miles an hour; but Indie racing is too European for my taste. The speeds necessitate that the drivers give each other a wide buffer, and the crashes are unspectacular, generally involving a single car losing control towards the top of the track, where debris accumulates, and then glancing off into the wall. Once the body of a formula car is damaged in any way, its day is done. The velocities attained require an integrated structure. I can only stomach formula racing because, in the end, it is still a race, with a single victor – the purest form of competition.
Stock car racing is more attuned to my way of thinking. These cars don't match the speeds of their formula racing counterparts, but they run close together and make contact throughout the race. The crashes, when the occur, are a result of this close-quarter combat. One car will badly disturb the air around another and send it spinning up the track – the other drivers making a mad, split second scramble to try and avoid carnage. For every driver involved in a wreck there are three others who narrowly avoid disaster through a combination of reflexes, guts, and pure luck. And a wreck doesn't mean the end of the race – the drivers hump their mangled machines back to the garage where their crew works feverishly with wrenches, hammers and blow torches to get the beast back out onto the track. Stock car racing is a classically American style of racing.
Stock Car Racing is American!
Nascar ran their race in the evening – the Coca Cola 600 held in Charlotte, North Carolina. I watched the beginning of the race, and then guests arrived – the Fryers: Jewel and Brent, along with a cooler filled with various liquors and snack foods. The benefit of a 600 mile race is that it lasts for hours – you can tune in and out over the course of the race and find excitement in whatever segment you happen to be paying attention to.
We made our way out to the back yard, to take advantage of the lingering sun. This property is new to Trish and I – we moved from our little city lot down in Chico to our 10 acre stretch of land here in Los Molinos in January, only five and a half months ago. We're still in the process of learning the lay of the land – probably will be until we die, assuming we are lucky enough for the inevitable event to happen while we are here. The four of us, beers in hand, make a slow tour of the landscape.
This property is a long, narrow rectangle of land – about one hundred and fifty yards across and running between two east/westbound roads. It belonged to the Southern Pacific Railroad until 1917, and was used as part of a switch yard. Berms of earth, about six feet high, span the length of the grounds. In the nearly hundred years since the tracks were in use the land has been allowed to go feral, and now it is dotted with over a hundred mature oaks – valley oaks and blue oaks, and a variety of native and imported grasses spring from the soil. There is a creek that cuts the property in half length-wise, and an irrigation ditch that runs along the north edge of the lot and feeds into said creek. That is, according to an old-timer who owns the land adjacent to ours, the “Los Molinos Creek,” and it feeds into the mighty Sacramento River – only about a quarter mile from us, to the west.
Figs grow around the creeks, as well as willows, wild grapes, a peculiar vine with a horn-shaped bloom called “Dutchman's Pipes,” and of course the ubiquitous and tenacious blackberry vines. A vast, sprawling “lady banks” rose bush has already dropped its bloom – a flowering carpet of small white blossoms. Now it is a mass of deep green, glossy, fingertip-sized leaves. Away from the water there are the oaks – a few towering, ancient specimens and the smaller, seventy to one hundred year old trees that still stand at their full height, and are so thick that when I wrap my arms around them my fingers do not meet. There are also a handful of other mature trees – a towering cottonwood hangs right on the border between our westbound neighbor's land and our own. There is a lone, beautiful sycamore I can see through the kitchen window – recognizable by light green, broad, maple-shaped leaves, and for its unique, mottled gray and silver bark. Between the oaks there are wild elderberry bushes, their billowing yellow blooms are giving way to hard, green berries. Wild plums provide sweet, yellow fruits. On the back side of the property, the side across the creek and away from the house, there are a handful of un-manicured almonds, maybe the remnants of an orchard attempted many decades ago.
The four of us rested awhile at a spot on the far bank of the creek. A joint was passed around and we talked about the wonder of potential – the immaculate freedom of the dream. For a moment anyway we allowed ourselves to forget the struggle, the work and the hardship of hammering that dream into tangible form. In that moment it was enough only to be, enjoying the company of friends and the beauty of the space immediately around us – ignoring the temporary nature of the perception of joy.
Eventually we meandered back across the creek and planted ourselves in patio furniture positioned on a leftover concrete pad – pointed so that our view was of the first stretch of property; a small valley formed by the intersection of two of the grass covered mounds that used to be railroad berms. I constantly wonder at those massive machines of steel and steam that once rolled across the land I now own.
We started in on the tequila – a finer brand of the stuff than I am accustomed to drinking. I am always amazed at how good and smooth a decent bottle of tequila can be. Schooled in San Diego, only forty five minutes from the border between the United States and Mexico, I was weaned on a cut-rate version of that cactus distillation – Jose Cuervo: the cheaper the better. We were in college. The result was a decade of aversion to that particular strain of liquor. But the tequila Jewel drinks is quality stuff, and it goes down easily. A few shots in and, coupled with those drags from the marijuana cigarette, my second real head buzz of the weekend was taking form. This is where events start to take on a cinematic, disjointed quality – a series of sepia-toned still frames and short scenes cut together in a hypnotic, spasmodic rhythm. Time loses its linear quality and reality becomes a mish-mash of memory, feeling, and dream, tempered with the punctuation of laughter and the creeping intoxication – the spirit of the great Doctor invoked and present, watching over us. What he's thinking I couldn't begin to guess. Fascination, horror, contempt, disgust? Humor, I hope, I would like to suspect. The realization is slowly starting to dawn on my slow-witted brain – that humor is the most important emotion, the quintessential state of being, that – strive for is not the right phrase – it needs to be there, all the time, underlying every action, hardship, misery, and pain that we will suffer. Without humor we are totally and completely lost and doomed. With it we are only lost and doomed, and laughing as we spiral down into the Abyss.
Heartbreak at the Coca-Cola 600
Brent lets us know that there are only 15 laps to go in the 600 – how he stumbled into the TV room and discovered that I can't say – maybe he went inside to urinate. 15 laps to go – every driver still in the lead pack wide-eyed and tense with the knowledge that a Memorial Day Weekend victory is within their grasp. My eyes also widen, and my heart races, when I realize that Dale Earnhardt Junior, in his green and white number 88 car, is in the lead. Earnhardt is the son of the legendary maniac driver known as the “Intimidator;” a driver who died on the track. “3” – you still see Earnhardt Senior's number emblazoned on pick-ups and muscle cars across the nation. “Junior,” as the currently competing Earnhardt is nicknamed, is the sport's most popular, current driver, of an exponential order. It's stated that about 50% of Nascar fans label Earnhardt as their favorite driver. Consider that there are 43 different drivers out on the track at the start of every race, and heavy hitting, highly-qualified contenders: Jeff Gordon, Jimmy Johnson, the wild Busch brothers, back-flipping Carl Edwards and my personal favorite - the once maverick, asshole, driver turned cool and methodical owner/driver Tony Stewart. Out of a field populated by supremely talented and charismatic, star-quality drivers, Dale Earnhardt Jr. stands alone as the sport's pied piper, the golden child, the chosen one.
It's cruel to say that Earnhardt has disappointed, and I won't make that claim here – but he hasn't won much. His career, spanning over a decade now, has been one of turmoil and transition, all under the heavy cloud of massive expectation. He's had his wins, over the years, but never been the consistent, cut-throat champion that his father was. But here he is, with a dozen laps to go, in the lead and looking strong – his car fast and under control. While he has been performing well as of late, demonstrated by a number of top five finishes, Junior hasn't had a win in nearly three years. The newer point format of Nascar has made the sport less about consistently wining, and more focused on finishing races in solid position – but it is undeniable that wins count in the psychological connection between the race car drivers and the fans who show up and tune in to watch them. A win, in a big race like this, in front of a Memorial Day crowd, would be undeniably meaningful for Dale Jr., - it might even knock that cruel and mocking monkey off of his burdened shoulders. 12 laps left...
The War Machine
Memorial Day – a day we set aside each year to honor the soldiers who have died in the almost seamless string of bloody wars our country has been involved in since its inception two hundred and thirty five years ago. And now we find ourselves again immersed in wartime – young men and women fighting and dying in foreign lands thousands of miles away, in the deserts of Iraq, and the mountainous regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“Generals gathered in their masses, Just like witches at black masses,
Evil minds that plot destruction, Sorcerers of death's construction.
In the fields the bodies burning, As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind, Poisoning their brainwashed minds.
Oh lord yeah!”
- Black Sabbath
Dammit if we don't let them do it. The war mongers have figured out the game. The reptilian brain adapts, the focus on violence and destruction is so finely honed that the adaptations do not have to be made on a grand scale – they are subtle shifts, diversions and misdirections - that point our collective perception to other stories and attractions. The war machines keep churning – battlefields soaked with blood, serenities shattered by the percussion of bombs, bullets, and the screams of the wounded and dying. Only it isn't happening here, and nobody from this country is being forced to take part in it. Hell, we haven't even been asked up front to pay for the damned exercise. All in the name of security and protecting the bloated, nauseating icon to materialism and gross consumption that is the prepackaged, focus panel-tested, mom approved, pasteurized and sanitized, “New and Improved American Dream™.”
Our current President rode in on a wave of popular sentiment and rhetoric about “change,” and “hope,” mantras that suggested a peaceful, humanitarian Utopia was within our grasp, dancing on the tips of our fingers – if only we make just the right move. He was probably right about that. Our politicians, our Presidents, consistently make the wrong moves when it comes to war and peace. On the television and in the newspapers, the pundits tell us we cannot leave the battlefields now, that if we do, indescribable atrocities will transpire. Our collective hands will be awash in the steaming, copper-scented blood borne of our negligence, impatience, and selfishness. It may have been wrong to go into war, but we're there now, and the responsible, moral, and upright thing to do is to finish the job – create “stability,” cut the heads off of all the god damned snakes. They say we don't understand our enemies and they are right – we don't even understand who our enemies are. But we know people, we know human nature – those of us who have human brains. There isn't any “complicated calculus” (the current phrase du jour babbling and gurgling to the surface of the apologist media stream) that we need to work out. Most people want peace. They want the basics – some food to eat, a fire to warm them, a roof to keep the rain out. They want to raise their children in an environment without constant death and bloodshed, they want to experience a bit of comfort at the end of a hard day's work. This is universal, this is the way 97+ percent of the people in the world think, regardless of race, religion, creed, or tribe. It is that small percentage, estimated between 1 and 3 percent, that are sociopaths - the power mongers and star fuckers – those are the ones we need to keep our eyes on. These people would tear at the memories and guts of their own grandmothers to feed an insatiable lust for conquest and ego. They are the ones we should be fighting – they are the true enemies of everything good and decent and reasonable that exists on this planet, in the forsaken year of our Lord 2011 – two millennium, a decade, and a year and a half, since the birth of a man who spoke simple, sublime words that we still can't seem to get our malformed, feeble, entangled brains wrapped around.
“Turn the other cheek,
so that your enemy might strike that one too.”
-Jesus Christ
We had an opportunity to do that – to demonstrate the combined forgiveness of a people, of the world. After the towers were felled, by a wave of force and darkness that has existed since time, there was a chance to end that cycle forever. The gates of Utopia, Heaven on Earth, of peace, were opened to us; maybe just a crack, but enough to get a foot in and then wrench the things apart. We could have, in the wake of that mass-killing, in the smoldering ruins that became a grave in the heart of American commerce, simply turned the other cheek. Think about it. The message that simple non-action would send: “Our way is right, your way is wrong. Peace wins out over barbarity.” The whole world would have taken notice of this conscious, restrained decision; not an indication of weakness, but an affirmation of strength! The extremists would have been through. No one would join up in their fight against an “enemy” that shouldered their best punch, and shrugged it off - walked away, chose not to fight.
Ah but of course that wasn't going to happen – never mind that the man in charge at the time happened to be a “devout and born again Christian” man. Presidents tend to lose site of the simple message and power of those good words once the mantle of power is in their hands.
“The people who need democracy don't even know what the word means; and the people that know what it means don't need it and don't mind saying so.”
-HST
The war machine had been triggered and now the behemoth is rolling down hill with a momentum all its own – the shackles of inertia finally broken. Time to feed. As if the beast is ever unmoving – the winds of war are always blowing somewhere. The sociopaths are hard to stop – the peaceful are always vulnerable to the random whims of the violent. But that doesn't mean we have to always be lead by them.
Two laps to go and our golden child is still maintaining his lead over the other competitors. The fans are giddy, the sense of impending triumph and joy is looming as the white flag signifying a single lap to go waves. But we, come in from our wandering and tequila and cannabis smoke, haven't seen the race's back story. And so I am completely mystified when, with the black and white checkered flag only a couple of hundred yards away, Junior's car loses power and drops speed – the closest drivers angle around his faltering vehicle and maneuver deftly around. A collective gasp rings out – in an instant it is done, the bulging bubble of anticipation has burst. In spite of a collective will – and I can guarantee to you that 99% of that crowd wanted to see Dale win that race – the anticipation of joy is undone. The race is lost. An instant later my brain makes the connection – he's run out of gas. The pit chief had taken a gamble and left him out when other cars came in for fuel. It was a gutsy call, the only call that gave the team a chance at a win – it was the right call and the crew chief would have been hailed “genius” if it had panned out. But the gods of fate and fuel interceded, and depression manifested from the shared vision of ecstasy. A massive wind went out of the crowd on hand in North Carolina, and across the nation, where racing fans had tuned in on televisions to watch the finale of a grand spectacle.
A Big Fire and Lots of Beer
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| Late night fire |
The post-race interviews were heart-wrenching. Dale, who'd ended up coasting across the start/finish line in 7th place, was nearly hysterical, and his crew chief was in tears. But that was their pain to endure - I had other emotional plans in store for the evening and the rest of the weekend. It was time to disconnect from the national consciousness and plug into our own, individual trips; the beginning of Memorial Day was only about four more hours away.
The party shifted outside where we doused the pile of brush and logs with diesel fuel and set it ablaze. The flames reached skyward as the initial dry fuel burned off and then the fire settled into a simmering boil of orange, yellow and black.
As the fire burned down my inebriation grew greater and the rest of the party of four went away. First Trish excused herself and staggered off to bed, then Brent and Jewel said good bye and took off down the road. The gate was latched behind them and I was by myself, with the fire and the spirits of the doomed and the dead dancing around me.
Woke up Monday Morning
The darkness faded to light and I was no more sober than I had been when the lights went out; but it was Memorial Day, and the 18-pack of 16 ounce beers we'd started in on the day before was still more than half full. I started in and the buzz was back. The day was glorious. I walked out of the house and a finch was just leaving the nest for the first time and flying confidently off into the world. It was the second of three that we had watched hatch and grow in a nest tucked into the beam that held our front porch roof up. I climbed up on a step ladder to peer down into the nest and saw the third bird remained – timid and trembling. God what a thing – to fly out into the world for the first time, to leave that external womb and test the feathers on those fine, light wings. I couldn't blame the little finch for its fear, I shuddered in empathy. I was happy to watch him a half hour later step up out of that nest, walk down the beam, shake itself off once, and then fly away, shakily at first but gaining momentum. It traced an arc-shaped, swooping pattern and landed on a lower branch of a nearby oak tree. That was the last I saw it, so far as I know. Now that finch is part of the flock.
It was an easy thing to keep the fire going – the larger pieces of wood from the night before were still smoldering atop an gray bed of coals that turned black and orange when the wind blew. I found more fuel – fallen oak branches – and piled them onto the pit. I discovered some branches that looked like they'd been cut long ago from a juniper shrub, and threw them onto the flickering fire. They created a tremendous amount of smoke, which worried me; but the day was gray and the neighbors all seemed content to wait it out inside. I was alone with the animals and the trees and the passing trains; alone with the fire and the wind, the grass and the ticks. I was alone with my thoughts and my beers and my inebriation. I drank and drank, staggering off repeatedly to find more fuel – must keep the fire burning, must have heat, must have flames. I drank and drank, tossing the empty cans into a neat pile beside me, sitting in a rounded, low-slung chair wrapped in artificial pink fur. I wore an artificial gray and silver fur coat to try and match the chair, topped my ensemble with alternating hats: a cowboy hat owned by John LaPado and a plaid fedora, complete with a brightly colored feather tucked into the hat band, that my grandfather had acquired on a vacation trip to Scotland. These were my ancestors, men not related to me in any way by blood, but nevertheless men who have taught me kindness and determination – men who possessed qualities of character I still struggle to realize. I like wearing those hats – knowing that they have rested on the crowns of those fine heads. I like thinking that those hats covered the scalps, skulls, and the brains, that made John, and my grandfather and namesake Robert, who they were.
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| Me and Bill, grabbing a hold of the American Dream! |
Eventually the beers caught up with me. I went inside and got myself a couple of blankets – one a fine-threaded cotton sheet, and the other a coarse, thick piece of material that might have been used for draping over delicate furniture during our move. I positioned the coarser rug on the ground by the fire, lay down on it, and pulled the finer blanket over myself. The top sheet was not so much for heat, but rather for protection from the afternoon sun that had finally decided to make an appearance. I drifted in and out of sleep, thinking about the weekend, the world.
I slept for some time and when I woke up it was still bright out. My throat felt scratchy from the fire's smoke and my eyes itched, but otherwise I was perfectly sober, not even hung over. My head was clear. I rolled over and opened my eyes. They focused quickly and easily. A dark, bulky buzzard floated overhead, circling on invisible air currents only twenty yards over my head.
I croaked up at it: “I'm not dead yet!”
The End
