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If Thou Be Near
This past weekend, with the truck's head gasket all but blown, I chuggged up a mountain road near Asheville, NC, following a friend with one broken lug on his rear right tire and the nuts of two more near the end of their thread, when an 80 year old woman with one eye and blue hair began to pull into the blind spot to her right, which I occupied.
For that brief moment in which I could watch this happening like the uninvolved spectator I wasn't, I thought, interesting, and, why is she trying to occupy a space that is currently occupied by me? Was this the moment that marked the end of time for one of us? Your time is up sir, you will relinquish your space to the blue haired woman. I could see in through her passenger side window the glove box and the latch of it was the last thing I remember before I started honking my horn and veering to the right onto that strip of pavement that is reserved for emergencies, and from which I used to hitchhike years ago, before various highway patrolmen threatened me with equally various degrees of success. Some patrolmen just politely explained how I needed to be hitchhiking from the on ramps and a couple even took me there themselves.
I remember unfriendly highway patrolmen in Virginia, Arizona, Montana, and a ChiP in Los Angeles and the thing all these guys had in common was their disdain for my occupation of state property. The trooper in Montana hit the bottom of my feet with his baton but in fairness to him he was trying to ascertain whether I was dead or alive,which was in question because I looked dead, in my serenely supine state across the front seat of the Ford Maverick, with my feet hanging out the open drivers side door, parked in a rest stop.
I continued to veer onto that little strip of asphalt, which in some states is more justifiably named as an "emergency lane" and in other states would be more aptly named "a waste of state money," and I realized I could, if need be, just occupy this lane for the emergency now occurring. I did not even consider at that time my previous trespasses of state property across America. Though as I straddled the white line separating the right lane proper from the emergency lane to its right, I did think of a joke from childhood. Your friend asks you would you rather slide down a razor blade naked or kiss a rabbit between the ears and at the time, probably not having developed any pleasurable use for pain, you say, kiss the rabbit, and he pulls inside out the whites of his front pockets and says, well come on then.
While I reminisced about tired jokes from childhood the eighty year old one eyed blue haired woman decided that she for one, wanted to live, that her time, was not up, and she began to veer back into the left lane, but a little wildly. She swerved back and forth a couple of times like something out of a tire commercial for tires you could imagine yourself buying.
And then I thought how I almost killed that woman, with the shotgun blast of my horn, just because she wanted to occupy space I felt was mine. But the space didn't belong to me. It belonged to the state of NC. The state flag of which is similar to that of Texas. I stayed at the Renaissance in Asheville, with Lorina. It was elegant. Very nice breakfast buffet. I carried her trumpet. She played Bach instead of jazz infused ska-punk. In a chapel in Waynesville. The things you do for love would include getting caught inside the groom's car with three women, placing origami cranes about the interior. It was embarrassing, but better than giving up for good your space to a one eyed blue haired elderly woman. Marginally better. I know of a local guy who makes hats from roadkill. I wonder what kind of hat I would have made, and if anybody would wear me?
Before Raking Leaves
I was sketching out in words this scene centered around a New Orleans youngster pulling a gun out of his sock during a three on three street basketball game. Those portable hoops with the black plastic bases are not exactly a ubiquitous New Orleans prop but they were pretty damn common to the neighborhoods in which I lived and traveled, during my ten year stay. And then just a few days later I hear from my nephew, who still lives in NO, that the city has outlawed those types of hoops in the street.
So like overnight what I was writing became history instead of what I was intending, which was a scene, although based on past experience, meant to reflect an ongoing metaphor-laden reality specifically tied to street basketball. This change in temporality is not crucial to any point I would ever intend to make seeing as how I am unclear myself on what the point is I would ever be trying to make.
Probably the street games restrict traffic flow to some degree and also I guess the gun being pulled from socks is not as uncommon as you would want it to be. And often the players will have some connection to the drug world. And there is violence and death in the drug world. No more newsworthy are the street deaths than the deaths caused every year by respectable drug companies but one might argue that the ratio of death versus benefit is more positively balanced in the world of super pharmaceutical companies. Or I should say unbalanced with the benefit side of the scale measuring much heavier in favor of the good provided by big drug companies. I mean I'm only guessing that pharmaceutical companies help more people than they kill, whereas the street dealers might be perceived, rightly or wrongly, to kill more people than they help. And so the city fathers by outlawing street basketball are again taking baby steps to curb a city problem with systemic roots of disease deeper than anyone has yet to effectively imagine a cure for. Even the drug companies are baffled because surely if they could figure a way to enter the lucrative street drug trade and rake into their coffers some of that sweet ghetto cake, they would have by now done so. The donation of Glaxo Kline Squibb Merck Beechum emblazoned backboards to the hood, as entry point to the market, is now out.
I have tons of ideas for New Orleans but they are all ridiculous and require massive hands on city-wide mentoring and out of personal pocket expense and deep personal heartache. And risk of death and lawsuits (you can invert those two in order of importance I guess) and failure. All my ideas carry with them a seemingly unacceptable failure rate, the beauty of which is--this is a thing they have in common with current practices and policies. Still, in a future world gone whack, where profit could be imagined or realized from the lifting up of our "lesser" citizens, I think I could see myself cutting off my hair, putting on a suit and sitting on some board, spewing ridiculous. "So you see, the benefit of populating floats of the (2,500 rich person only) Endymion parade, entirely with area youth from the ghettoes, and having the rich people populating the predominately poorer sections of the parade route and then the mixing afterwards at the big Superdome party, would be that of a first step towards turning the existing, and failing, system asunder..." And then the rich person says but my system is not failing and I would turn to that person and raise my left eyebrow.
Melba Got My Goat
Oh yeah nephew, well you tell that Melba I went through quite a bit of agony for her that night but if I had known what her reaction was going to be I would have done what the rest of her neighbors did--watched and done nothing and said nothing.
As to her suggestion that it didn't matter if I had a phone or not, that I should have confronted the guy stealing her washing machine on a well lit early evening, as he grinded the sides of it up against the metal fence posts trying to extricate it from the too small opening, and yelled out--"I'm calling the police now"--let me just now say that the reason I gave at the time, not having a phone, was not the real reason I never even considered such a ridiculous common sense solution to crime in that rather diluted version of the hood.
I know what you're thinking, jeez uncle, that Melba really got your goat on this one and yes you are right. Melba got my goat. Midwestern poseur. At least I never pretended I fit in that neighborhood, even though in a way I did. And I similarly drape like a flamboyant cape the drama of those New Orleans neighborhoods over the bony shoulders of my existence. So maybe I should ease up on those accusations, except in small doses I like it and its fun, so maybe I won't.
I tried to follow the guy and see where he went, and failed instantly. In the time it took me to sit down and put on my shoes and go out and start the truck, he was gone. A man pushing a washing machine on a handcart down the middle of the street just vanished in the span of thirty seconds. Did that mean he was a neighbor? Maybe, not necessarily, maybe.
It was sort of surreal nephew, because it took the guy a while to get the machine out into the street. And people were passing him on the sidewalk, and ignoring him. Some went into the residence next door and others just moseyed on up to the corner. I had been broken into three times the previous year and the previous week all five of my neighbors to the side had been burgled in one night, backyard sheds ransacked. I didn't really give a good goddamn about her washing machine, I wanted a sacrificial lamb in jail, and I thought the best way to accomplish that was to follow the guy.
Her idea was that I would call out to him that I was calling the police, he would drop the machine and run away, with his handcart. But if he had to take the handcart anyway, why would he give up the washing machine? I woke up five times that night to keep an eye on her and her talented husband's house to make sure a general ransacking was not going on. Did the bitch even begrudgingly thank me for my efforts? No nephew, she did not.
Did I mention that I went around the corner to that grocery store to call the cops from a pay phone? I had to wait to make the call though because there was a cop on the pay phone, his car idling at the curb. Another cop in a different car was ooh-ing and awe-ing over this gangster's CD collection who was handing through the driver's side window all the very latest hot shit from the Rap world. I waited patiently near the cop on the pay phone, once nodding at him with a look of inquiry and solicitation. He didn't seem all that disappointed to deal with me but he did seem like he had other things to be doing. He followed me around the corner and after a brief consult said he might know who did the burglary, and drove off towards the river. I went inside and twenty minutes later I hear a honk in the street and look out and there he is, the cop. I go out to the street and he's got some criminal in his backseat that he caught while looking for my criminal. He says he's gotta go. And that's the last I saw of the cops regarding that incident.
And anyway, what was I supposed to do if the guy did drop the washing machine? I still would have had to run after him to borrow his handcart to move the damn thing to safety. Yeah, that Melba's got my goat all right.
You know nephew, I've already told this story once somewhere on this site but your recent emailed mention of Melba just got my blood boiling all over again.
But the real reason nephew? The real reason I didn't confront the guy and scare him away as Melba implies she has done to characters malingering around my place in my absence? The real reason is I was scared. The dude I was watching out my window was scary in a way that was different from the way I may have been frightened after telling a murderer to get off my motherfucking porch, at that other house I used to live at around the corner. The combination of determination and desperation that emanated from the robber's movements and the nonchalance of the passerby, all of this in more or less early evening broad daylight, well, it sort of freaked me. I did not want to make contact of any kind with this guy. To me, he was that scary. And you know, for a couple of years, at that other house, I was stepping over on my way to and from work the heavyweights of scary local crime, as they played dominoes and cards on the porch.
Well nephew, none of that old business is germane to my current morning so I better get on with it. Just needed to vent a little, no, no, I'm not blaming you.
Anyway, technically, the truth can be how Melba remembers it. I did, afterall, watch from beginning to end, a guy steal her washing machine, and push it down the middle of the street on a handcart, in broad daylight. In retrospect I guess my only regret is that I didn't sleep through the night thereafter.
Love In The 21st
So in the end, or up to this point anyway, Lorina and I (have) decided that while the preconceived idea to break up one day prior to Valentines day was a good one, an idea of such stellar proportion that it perhaps implied the backing of extra-terrestrial intelligence, we would, much to our mutual and occasionally ecstasy laden agony, carry on this love fest with--what we now are mature (ha) enough to realize is the only reasonable and sustainable course--a day to day lease of careful and loving consideration.
It has been eight months since we initiated this relationship in that sort of secret and sly way that shy people go about things, and, despite the fact of my sometimes debilitating verbal reticence, it seems I have already conveyed to Lorina each and every fact of the forty-plus years of my moderately interesting but let's face it, dull existence. And although I know it is not true that I have conveyed all the idiotic tidbits of my previous and ongoing actuality, I have though already started repeating some of the more mundane bits.
You know, the belt I lost, I got at one of those superstores a couple of years ago, and I had to stand in front of the belt rack for twenty minutes before making what was essentially the same impulse buy I could have made in 90 seconds. And I had to alter it by slicing one of the loops off because it had two loops side by side and esthetically that became a thing unusually, I think it was unusual anyway, displeasing to me.
Lorina nods behind the wheel of her Ford entering Front Royal and politely says yes she remembers me mentioning that. And all of a sudden I have this mini-explosive awareness of all the other crap I have already told her, and how much of it I have retold her, some of it more than twice, and in just eight months(?).
She's been in Dallas with me a couple of times while I visit my aging mother so understands some aspects of my genetic potential.
But maybe it is true that there aren't that many interesting note-worthy factoids in a day, a month, a year, a life. And what explains how some things get stuck in your memory bank and how other things don't? I'm trying to think of something unique I could tell Lorina when I next see her.
Lorina, hey Lorina!
What?
The oatmeal? It was, uh, hot!
Really?
Yeah! And the bowl the oatmeal was in?
Hmm hmm.
When it came in contact with the buckle of my new belt?, which was on the bed beside me so that I can study it for displeasing imperfections? Well, there was a sort of clinking noise!
You don't say.
Yeah, and then I looked out the window? And it was windy looking? So I had to postpone tearing down that dog pen for awhile longer because of windchill factor...Lorina?...Lorina?... LowRINuh!? (She probably just had to go put her contacts in or something).
Running in New Orleans
Anonymous and not necessarily a man wrote in yesterday to say he ( I'm saying man) packed two .44 Magnum hand guns to feel safe while driving around Mobile, Alabama and that he was happy that Louisiana accepted without hassle the Alabama gun permits because he visited New Orleans on a regular basis and by implication of two .44 Magnums he felt he may need to shoot somebody dead on one of his visits. He meant in self-defense.
I just wanted to say that if memory serves me it is also copacetic (and legal) to carry your permitted weapon in a concealed fashion in New Orleans, which for the purposes of feeling safe might come in handy and that perhaps the man should consider a .38 snub nose or even one of the smaller, almost feminine handguns, for comfortable concealment during those many sultry summer days in the sub-tropical New Orleans climate, when one is inclined to wear the least amount of concealing clothing possible.
Of course, for just driving around in an air-conditioned vehicle, and if you are driving one of the popular choices of the car jacker (I believe you can find the top ten list for popular cars to steal in your area, on the Internet), that .44 Magnum on the passenger seat under a towel is pretty sweet for the defending of your life and property. In New Orleans, and I may just be making this up, I am pretty sure that the rules concerning the use of lethal response to potential car jacking are somewhat relaxed. If you are parked at a light and a person with a weapon in their hand approaches your vehicle, and they are not flashing a badge or otherwise making themselves known as cops, you may, at your discretion, shoot dead the approaching person. You need not wait for the person to actually threaten you verbally or point their weapon at you. You may dispose of this person who is coming for your Toyota Camry.
Again, my knowledge on these matters is so completely anecdotal as to be almost irrelevant, and one who intends to pursue avenues of legal killing in New Orleans would be well advised to consult the proper authorities before actually killing someone.
And I'm honestly not all that hip to what the best hand gun would be for every situation and I know the various versions of the 9mm are widely popular but I think for the purpose of occasional killing I would prefer the revolver to the semi-automatic because of that annoying possibility of the semi-automatic to jam up, or go click because you forgot to jack a shell into the chamber, when what you are intending is ka-blam, which is the proper noise to hear preceding the death of another human by hand gun.
Some people I think tend to feel limited by the six shots of the average revolver versus the eleven to thirteen possible chances with the semi-automatic but let's face it, if you can't kill someone with six shots at close range (remember, this is self-defense killing, your range is going to be between a few feet and point blank), then you probably should not have a gun in the first place.
The need to kill our fellow humans with available weaponry is not a thing new to our times. It would be most excellent if it were because there would then be the implication that it is something within an evolutionary process that we could hope to outgrow. Instead, I think it is more likely that if we haven't outgrown it by now, we will not ever out grow it. With this in mind I will offer a last little piece of throw away advice--try not to kill people, try to avoid it. But if you really can't avoid it then I believe the conventional wisdom is--aim for the largest part of your target, also known as the human torso, and pull the trigger until your weapon is empty. If your target, also known as the human being, is not then dead, you should run. Running as a first option is also highly desirable. Of course, here, due to a New Orleans incident or two of which I am aware, in good conscience I have to add--run away from the person with the gun, not towards them.
Constructing Spring
One minute I'm outside practically naked digging up a flower bed and the next minute I'm shivering inside looking out at the horizontally blowing snow and being all herky-jerky like the delirious-tremens poster boy every time the wind opens and slam-shuts the multiple screen doors on this dwelling.
It is the next day now and looking out there are only a few trace reminders of the snow and the wind is asserting only its merest influence on the pine boughs. I could venture out but only fools rush in..., I don't know? If that's about love I'm not going there. I cannot lasso an idea that depends on ephemerality to exist. I am not allowed. I was denied credentials. Two other things I cannot do is fly, and, make sparks shoot out from my fingers.
I am quite a little sleeper, able to drown in cessation, but sometimes I stay up all night composing not one cogent thought as I bathe myself in self-doubt, which I only mention to attempt the deconstruction of happiness.
I am this year trying to remember that some bats are birds and some birds are, in actuality, tree frogs.
Devil Stairs
You actually have to descend after the ascension but I'll say it like this anyway--I went up to Big Devil's Stairs this week. There was a Lexus SUV with Maryland plates in what is the only parking space and so I had to park in what turned out to be an illegal spot. Coming back to the spot later I would think briefly about becoming an outlaw again or depending on your definition, for the first time, and going on the lam to avoid any dealings with that lawman with initials for a first name who had left his card in the bottom right hand corner of my driver's side window, tightly inserted behind the weather-stripping. The card had a hand written message that said--Please Contact Today! Had it not been for the Please and the exclamation point I would have jumped the nearest boxcar out of here. I hope it is a sign of maturity and not weakness that now makes me give the law its due credit and consideration for politeness.
I was trying to do nine miles before sunset and I was getting a late start, a slurpable go-cup full of black-eyed peas my lunch in transit, and four one-slice peanut butter sandwiches my hiking fuel. And a bottle of water. No drugs, but if that's true, why even mention it? Because you couldn't get 'em lit is why, you punk ass, ill-prepared sissy. No drugs is better though and I am for one brief instant being completely straight with you. Even though it's only an opinion and therefore debatable. Or because it's an opinion it's not debatable, I get mixed up, but I don't want to linger on this point, I'd like to get back with minimal delay to this obliquely sincere version of my view on the moments that make up my day.
I took the horse trail shortcut because I wanted to by-pass the camping shelter with the log book I can't resist reading but that makes me sad because of the predictability of the human emotion it contains. The happy scribblings make me think of that animated short that ends with the big claw foot of Godzilla squashing flat on the forest floor the short lived Bambi.
Snow from last week is still on the trail and unlike previous snow hikes this time it's only me leaving human tracks, parallel to or on top of the deer and cat and crow feet. The snow is good, not too soft and not too crunchy. I have waterproof hiking boots this year and five dollar socks so I'm really well equipped from the ankles down. I still wear jeans though and a brown leather work jacket that was left behind at M's house in New Orleans. She did not know who's it was or what was the history behind the jacket before it ended up stashed at her house but the details behind the origins of it are perhaps inauspicious. I will here just have to leave it to the scholars of modern juvenile hijinks what these details might include. You can have it if you need it she said to me.
I took it and all its undeclared history with me when I left New Orleans.
A couple of weeks ago I was on this same trail (which is in Virginia, not New Orleans) when a surprise rain storm caught me clueless without a poncho and I had to use the jacket like an umbrella. After it dried out it looked really good, even better than before, so I don't know about this idea that water is bad for leather. It has plenty of pockets and in the pockets I have stashed a water bottle, four cellophane wrapped single slice peanut butter sandwiches, a very small 2mega pixel digital camera, a 5gig Mp3 player, and curiously, because I have no film camera, an old plastic film container. I wear a knit cap and brown cotton work gloves that keep me warm enough to leave the jacket open to expose my thrift store outer shirt which is open to expose my faded navy, paint speckled under shirt. The zipper is busted on the jacket.
I passed the Maryland couple on the way up (they hadn't hiked far enough to mess up any of the snow) and they were dressed more appropriately than I. Hiking is a ga-billion dollar a year industry and there does exist a wide array of proper hiking clothing and gear. We exchanged hearty hellos, which is optional, and I admired the fabric, buttons, functionality, and style of their garb, which they wore as they should, unselfconsciously.
I got to the cliff over the chasm which is the payoff of the Big Devil's Stairs hike and it is a good one if you are into all that depth of field beauty inherent to foregrounds that drop a thousand feet and multilayered, undulating, blue-green, black-shadowed, snow-dusted mountains as background.
With all that majesty before me and certain death a misstep away I thought about my doctor's appointment the next day, the first in ten years, which at this writing has already happened--and proven my procrastination fueled but understandable fears to be baseless, (and given bolder credence to the words of that gypsy at last year's Christmas party: that I'm going to live long, in fact longer than some will appreciate)--but hadn't happened then and so was still a weighty thought, heavier than the lofty and dizzying sense of freedom and flight one might ordinarily feel at cliff's edge. I waited, but perhaps not long enough, for an epiphany that did not come.
Back at my truck after the hike, the card from the cop stuck in my widow as a reminder that a nine mile hike intended to ease one's mind can sometimes be followed by a sharp stick in your eye. I debated about calling the cop but not too long did I kid myself about not calling the initialed officer. Back home I tarried a bit by checking my email and then I practiced my gender neutral phrasing, and made the call. It was a man who answered and I identified myself as the missing hiker. The officer sternly but politely gave me some advice about parking and I assured him (was I too obsequious?) that in the future his advice would be that which I followed. But I think I'm done with that hike for awhile and will look around for trails that lead elsewhere.