The Emperors' New Sandwich

The crowd goes wild over a pop queen movie star getting her costume jacket back from some dude who bought it an auction. Isn’t he a sweet man? Yeah, it was for a good cause, raising money for a cancer charity. That’s nice. No offense to her but why the need for headlines? Can’t do something nice without a shot of celebrity attention? Something is messed up, willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on vanity. Let’s hope they won’t scream too loud when asked to put something fair towards the common good. Ah, who are we kidding, they will howl like someone stole their SUV.

Turn up the volume on whatever is crammed into our ears. Irrigate the nostrils with mist reeking of donut glaze or cotton candy. Anything to drown out the noise and reek that are the side effects of wrecking the planet. Distraction for the senses as parts of the world literally go up in smoke, while the so-called leaders take vacations or go golfing on the backs of working people who are killing themselves to survive. Breathe in, all you mad kings, you soulless bastards, and stop using precious oxygen attacking youngsters who want a planet on which we can live. But what’s that you say? Bitches already gave you yo money? So they can step off, to die in wildfires or hurricanes while you get fat in your bunkers? Yeah, no surprise there.

Breathe in the smoke. Shelter in place under the radiant parasol of the night sky. Marvel at days brighter and hotter than they have ever been. Sirens? What sirens? The rulers of 330 million separate empires plug their ears against the din. Pupils dilated by legal speed, twitching eyes struggling to focus on the latest commercials. Corporate shills hawking the promise of fast-food nirvana. Press lever, receive drug. Repeat, while the goddamn palaces burn down around their ears. The emperors chew loudly to drown out the voices of the abused, the oppressed, the melanin-rich but power-poor. Chicken sandwiches, man. Fuck you if you get in the way of their chicken sandwiches. Courtiers shrug when someone dies fighting over goddamned sandwiches. The emperors continue to gorge on Death, golden brown and delicious.

Be Proud You're A Rebel?

This is a bit of a long one, but it could not wait. It contains some words that are hurtful demanded by context. I submitted a version of this in December 2016, in response to "We Are Bitter, No. 2: From 2016 Forward," an essay (linked here) by Chuck Reece, editor-in-chief of The Bitter Southerner. The Bitter Southerner is a fine online magazine about the South and things Southern, in its myths, its realities, and its futures. I did not hear back from The BS (as it is affectionately referred to), but with the horrible events that occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia over August 11th and 12th, I felt compelled to give it another turn in the light. It has been edited to take into account those recent events.

I was born and raised in southeastern Virginia, Portsmouth to be exact. I went to college at Virginia Tech, up in the Blue Ridge mountains in Blacksburg. Upon graduation, I wound up in Baltimore, Maryland where I stayed for over twenty years to find myself with an ex-wife, a daughter I adore, and probably nowhere to go from there. This before life got really crazy and I ended up in love again and in Kansas, where I lived until July 2017. Things did not work out in the heartland, and I moved myself back to Maryland, this time to the city of Annapolis.

To talk about a new South, a new America, we have to discuss the ugly, nasty truths of the past. The last election cycle in particular made everyone –hopefully, everyone—look inward to reexamine their consciences and outward to reexamine the cultural matrix to which they are beholden. I know I did.

To my shame, racism and bigotry were part of my upbringing. It never reached the magnitude of joining the KKK or actively seeking out the “others” for abuse and belittlement, but it was there. It was casually woven into the fabric of our daily lives. We, including myself, had no qualms about telling ‘nigger’ jokes or using it to say “those niggers” in the same way that more enlightened people would say “those folks.” You would hear stuff like that among white peers at the same time you wouldn’t actually say it to someone’s brown face.

The same shameful treatment was applied to Hispanics, Middle Easterners, Asians, the disabled, and LGBTQ folks. Equal opportunity bigotry, no doubt. I often felt uncomfortable spewing such things, but it never bothered me enough to stop myself or call out others when they did. I let myself be misled because I did not think to question it.

That is until the day I had a jarring break with the culture in which I was embedded. My awakening to what was really going on around me. An occurrence I will never forget happened in front of me as I walked into a shopping mall in my hometown. Ahead of me were two white men, appearing to be in their 20’s. Bearded and clad in a fairly typical set of work clothes that almost could have been our city’s uniform, they reached the door just as a little African-American girl was coming out.

She was probably no more than about four or five years old, carrying a toy and pushing on the door while her mother followed behind. The girl paused in the doorway which momentarily blocked traffic. Just as I came up behind the two men, I heard one of them snarl at the girl “Get outta the way, you little nigger!”

Thunderstruck is too mild to describe what I felt. I stopped while the two men pushed rudely past the girl and into the mall. To her credit, the girl did not seem to notice the slur hurled at her. But I am sure her mother heard it, because she hustled the child out the door much faster than you would expect for something so casual as a shopping trip. A few steps into the building, I had to stop a moment to collect myself.

I felt sick. A churning stomach and a racing heart catalyzed by the brush with violence and hate I witnessed. I had no understanding. How could that be? The girl was being a child, no bother to anyone, and yet these men saw fit to verbally abuse her because of her skin color? The illogic and injustice of it made my head spin. It sank in that this was how a lot of society, my society, operated, hurting others with thoughtless cruelty because they could get away with it, backed up as it was with structural and institutional racism.

The first of many switches flipped that night. I went home uneasy and sad while trying to make sense of the loathsome behavior I witnessed. It sparked the first of many years (in my teens then, in my 50’s now) of introspection and inquiry into the causes of such bad behavior and how to eliminate it in myself. I started turning a skeptical eye towards society. Intellectual laziness and lack of awareness had led me down a slippery, dead-end path. I began to question things, starting off with how I had allowed others to do my thinking for me.

I felt ashamed of the Southern way of life in which I lived. The people around me began to sound backwards. My own voice started to trouble me because I realized I did have a drawl, even if it wasn’t as deeply twangy as some of my friends and relatives. Arriving at college, I actively sought to drop the accent and even leave behind certain figures of speech. I was around a lot of different people in that time, and was self-conscious about being considered too “Southern.”

I succeeded, to a degree. In my early years out of school, working for what ended up being about 20 years in Maryland, many of my co-workers seemed mildly surprised to find out I was from Virginia, because I did not sound particularly Southern. I even lost my taste for sweet tea, if you can imagine that! The net result was that slowly over time my roots loosened their grip on the soil from which they sprang. I became untethered from the past in such a way that I cast off the prejudices I despised but forgot to hold on to some of the good things I loved.

As the years unfolded I thought more and more of myself as American, but without regional identity. I was haunted by the notion that I was missing something that I could not put my finger on. I cannot tell you exactly when my search began to find what I lacked. But I can tell you my primary research medium was food. I have always been a trencherman, and learning about myself through cooking and eating foods from my birth region was a natural fit even if I was not fully cognizant of why I wished to do so.

Smithfield ham. Cornbread and grits. Fried chicken and collard greens. Some things I loved to eat and some things I thought I could happily do without now became more important than ever. Mail-order sorghum even made an appearance or two in my house. An old cast-iron skillet of my maternal grandmother’s fell into my hands as an inheritance when she passed away. It took me years to understand the great gift that skillet was, one that I still hope to live up to when I cook.

The point is that each dab of sorghum and butter on a biscuit, each skillet of cornbread, each forkful of collard greens I washed down with my (unsweet) tea began to fill me up in ways beyond the mere existence of calories in the belly. It all filled me up with home. The sense of dislocation I dragged around for years slipped away and the roots began to push themselves back into the dirt of my creation. There was an eagerness to share with others the Southern boy that I was and am. My adventures in cooking also taught me history as a spectrum, and food as a bridge to others.

This eagerness and comfort grew in the years between my divorce, subsequent relocation to the Midwest, and the travesty of the 2016 election year. My sense of well-being took a big hit as I watched the ugliness spewing out of the mouths of our President-elect and his repugnant followers. Who could pay attention to the news cycle and not be shocked and upset by the flood of bigotry bearing down on us as a nation?

Memories started creeping back in. Flashbacks to the times as a teenager when I paraded a Confederate flag around the neighborhood because I thought it was cool. Embarrassment at having participated in Civil War reenactments, on the side of the South of course, because I wanted to be a rebel. Shame welled up when I recalled telling and laughing at ‘spear chucker’ jokes, thoroughly thoughtless and disrespectful of the African-Americans I personally knew and liked at school. Waves of regret when I remembered that little girl at the mall and how I lacked courage to stand up to racist bullies and call them out on their vileness.

I was young, once, and stupid.

So it was when the election results were announced that I felt horrible for Americans in general and Southerners in particular. All this time having gone by, the history under our collective belts, and we have learned not enough to elect such a terrible representative of the American ideal? 

Watching the news about racists and neo-Nazis marching Charlottesville stirred up the muck again. The horrific act of murder we witnessed in that car plowing into a group of marchers who had taken upon themselves the hard work of opposing hatred, bigotry, and evil. A young woman who stood up for many good things killed by a man who took hatred and spite to obscene levels: this is the malignant fruit falling from trees planted long ago. 

Hearing the president generically condemn the violence, with the morally bankrupt stance of "many sides" being at fault, it hit me hard that we could have done so much better. We have to do better, be better . For the sake of all of us, we are going to have to oppose the white nationalist agenda of hatred, discrimination, and violence. 

In the South, whether you live there or carry it in your heart (as I do) and in America in general, we have to learn to talk about Confederate flags without waving them or using them as tools of fear and oppression. We have to stop fetishizing statues of deeply flawed, sometimes evil people. We have to understand we can move into the future without necessarily burying our past, but that future means inviting everyone to the table and being honest in our conversations with our fellow Americans. Claiming  superiority because of skin color and heritage is a desperately weak gambit to demand participation in the ideal of America. It only shines a bitter light on the institutional racism built into our society.

Difficult work is needed to determine who we want to be as Americans moving into the future. The arc of history is pretty clear on that score. We carry the moral imperative to resist hatred and bigotry wherever we encounter it. I learned that lesson long ago, acknowledging my personal shame in these matters and opening my mind and heart to cast out the hate I had thoughtlessly absorbed. After Charlottesville, it is clear that many white Americans have not done the same. We cannot avert our eyes, stifle our voices, shut our ears. We have bridges to build, not burn, if we claim to be Americans.

Et Tu, Amor? (Sensory Deprivation)

Long ago I read somewhere something like to be writer one has to deal in hard truths, discomfort, and things that make one cringe and squirm. Honesty of feeling is paramount in what goes on the page. Credibility is at stake. I know this. I have written about some things that made me squirm and cringe. I understand this need for honesty. Honesty has been on my mind overly much these days, a byproduct of emotional turmoil and loss. Here is a little hard truth I need to purge. I want love to bleed.

My cup may brim full of cynicism and bile, but love is an asshole. An asshole with inexhaustible resources to keep reminding my heart of that fact. Omnia vincit amor (“Love conquers all,”) wrote Virgil in his Eclogue X. I believed him, once upon a time, but in a very different fashion. That has changed. Love may conquer all as a creator, but this time it conquered me as a destroyer.

In my time of writing I have spilled much ink, digital and physical, in defense of love. How it can sustain you. How it ties one to others and allows growth, security, desire. Now I am seeing I have no faith anymore in my own hype. There is a limit to the numbers of heartbreaks I can take. It is most maddening that we have no way to hold love accountable for its transgressions.

Love lied to me. Not once, not twice, but three goddamn times in my adult life it flattered to deceive, pulled me down a path I believed led to a cure for loneliness and pain, a fountain of belonging. Love betrayed me. It smiled the entire time, every time, with every twist of the knife. So begins the stripping away of the senses that give juice to life.

Betrayal by love disturbs touch. Heat, cold, rough, smooth: all that is tactile carries with it at least a little irritation. Even the absence of sensation creates its own peculiar pain. The hands mourn the loss of a lover's hip, the mouth the lover's lips. There is perhaps nothing so generative of heartache than the void within one's grasp. To reach out in the night and feel nothing but space and sheets is agony realized to a degree bordering on obscenity.

Love as a pillager can ruin a good music library. All those great songs, and so many become unlistenable now. Listening is either a reminder of how good love was or how searing its absence. It is a small percentage of songs left that I can or want to hear without hitting skip. Raw emotion, anger, frustration working itself out in the screaming of lyrics that speak to all of those things festering in a heart exploding along the scars and fault lines. Most importantly, a verbal catharsis to help numb the lonely helplessness if only the sound did not hurt so much.

Do not think the palate escapes the collateral damage of losing love. Oh, no, taste suffers its own degradations. Brightness and sweet fade from the tongue. Savory turns to sour, ashes in the back of the throat. If taste remains it is bitter metallic. To sometimes eat alone by benign circumstance is a fact of existence, easily endured. To eat alone because of banishment from the table of the heart is an exercise in catered despair. Forget about cooking for joy. Stirring the pot with a broken heart is mere pragmatic numbness. The soul may be in limbo, but the belly has its own agenda. When they quarrel, hunger often wins at the cost of inner peace.

With love's loss, the eyes offend us but common sense lobbies hard to not pluck them out. Much business of life still depends on seeing in spite of the searing reminders of what we once had. Who knew that a photograph could pass as a branding iron? What terrible hooks in the heart are pulled at passing glances of social media feeds and photographs! They lie in ambush, these frozen memories of a life once well lived. Turn the page, scroll down left or right, none of it matters. Our eyes collide with the now fractured landmarks of a shared history that was more good than bad.

The heart swears that it recalls the scent of love yet it is the nose that does the work. The gentle aromas of existence, sunlight on a lover's skin combined with rumpled cotton and sweat. Pheromones aloft in the kitchen sensed over the aroma of dinner, teased out with a nuzzle to the neck. Exhalations and inhalations of a nightcap's departure in that time-stopping moment before the consummation of a goodnight kiss. Even the humble nose deals with loss when hearts disassociate.

Someone once told me that love is never the wrong answer. For years, I subscribed to that theology. I was a True Believer. It felt good, it felt right. But I woke up one morning after a few weeks alone again and decided my name was Thomas. The stigmata haven't changed my mind. Maybe because the stigmata are in my palms and I know the source of the pain.

You may think I wish to banish love from my life. No, I want to interrogate it. I want to cuff it to the table in the Box, break it down masterfully like Detective Frank Pembleton did to those perps on Homicide: Life on the Street. I want love to sob into its fist and tell me what horrid excuse it has for killing my heart. Of course, love is not guilty of murder, because I'm still alive. Fraud is another matter, and love is guilty as fuck.

Last Known Sighting

Over the many winters of his life, the mapmaker Bradán could not recall vellum as old as that which lay before him. Rougher than the newer leaves, but thick and sturdy. The tiktiktik of dividers scratching upon its surface a metronome to his thoughts, struggling mightily to contain them. He laid down the worn brass instrument to pinch the bridge of his nose with ink-darkened fingers. The momentary relief of pressure gave pause for him to consider just what were his thoughts.

Looking out the window to the sea, his mind turned to the days of youth spent fishing along the shore. Bluefish and striped bass were the prizes, he recalled. But it was the silversides and menhaden the prizes chased. His thoughts, Bradán concluded, were silversides thrashing their way through the shallows in a frantic attempt to escape the maws behind them. Silver sparks jetting through a fuliginous night in which they will not be caught until exhausted and bereft of juice.

The sea rolled on, breakers of teal and jade painting the sand to dissolve into foam. Bradán turned his attention back to his drawing table. The parchment lay stretched out before him. It was incomplete, inescapable. Most of the mapmaker's work began with a photograph, sometimes more than one. Photographs gave the mapmaker the fixed point he required to set an axis for the world, a maypole about which his imaginings danced in the light of the sun. As it would appear to a casual visitor to the shop, this project was no different.

Bradán knew otherwise. Photographs carry with them invisible burdens, transparent gravities known only to the select few who had anything to do with the making of the picture. The lines he had set down on vellum only hinted at the density of their genesis, a slightly grainy black-and-white image perched on a tiny easel at the head of the table. The photograph curved space and time. He marveled that it did not crash through the desk under the weight of subject.

The subject gave him pause. He looked closely at the intersections, the circles, the tangents he placed so far. No matter how thick the lines to his eye they seemed feeble in light of that which they sought to locate. Too thick and they would blot out the page. Too thin and the heart would not be able to trace them back to the source. It was a conundrum Bradán faced often in his work. Decades of experience, drawing arcs and origin points, had endowed him with a near supernatural ability to parse lines and weights. Pilgrims made their way to his door based on his reputation to locate the lost or undiscovered.

A different day, a different problem. He knew this. Never before had he encountered such a riddle, a temporal-spatial quandary of such depth and intensity. He had heard of such things. More than one tale of complexities had he heard from the two masters responsible for bringing him into the brotherhood of De Animabus Cartographers, mapmakers of the souls. Master Gerrit had been old when the mapmaker entered his care as a youth, and had related twice the creation of maps so difficult they had whitened the beard upon his face. When Gerrit died, Master Kwan took over. Kwan was younger, inclined to impatience and silence. But even he held the marks on him of a map so harrowing it was a wonder the master had survived.

Bradán leaned back in his chair. He adjusted the wooden blind at the window to allow more light to stream across the table. The map was beginning to take form, but what? Where was it going? He feared it might be his encounter with myth, the infernal Map of the Night used to frighten weak-minded and superstitious mapmakers in training. Bradán had never known what to make of such tales, but he could tell his masters had heard the same things in their apprentice days. He was not sure that they did not believe the stories themselves. Unknowns were very much part and parcel of their existence.

He hefted a compass while absentmindedly twirling the adjustment wheel. His instincts knew when to stop. Abruptly he leaned in over the parchment to place a series of overlapping circles. Five in number, some tangents included, he felt the rightness of placement and the anxiety engendered by the maddening occlusion that sometimes befell his inner sight. His hand reached out for a parallel rule and a old nickel-silver quill pen. Lines flowed onto the vellum, deft and true. Gone were the ink smears of his journeyman days, the wavering lines, the skips. Bradán slipped into the trance so familiar and necessary to his work.

The map fleshed itself out. Hours passed. The north light changed subtly, something he only noticed when he paused long enough to sip uisce beatha carefully from a stoneware cup. His late lunch consisted of smoked herring and brown bread studded with currants. He barely noticed the smoky sting of whiskey and the sweetness of the fruit. He sensed the map was nearing completion. Perhaps by nightfall he could lay down his instruments.

The sea and the sky had other ideas. While he had been slaving away over the map, a storm had moved in. Wind whipped the sea into a bedlam of froth in violent parley with the sky as to who would dominate the shore. Gale force winds pounded the stone walls of the cottage, rattling the windows with threats to smash the glass. Bradán awoke from his trance to hurriedly close the shutters all around. The gloom prompted him to light up the four hurricane lamps he possessed, bulbous brass bellies cast in the shape of pineapples topped with seeded glass chimneys. Rain fell hard as liquid cannonballs hitting the roof. Bradán made his way back to the desk.

Standing before the desk in the pale gold light of the lamps, the truth of the matter became clear to the mapmaker. The map was huge as these maps went. It covered nearly the entire surface of the desk. Rich golds, blues, and crimsons held their own against the deep black boundary lines, the points, the listing planes. Beautiful, he thought, but incomplete. A chill settled into the pit of his belly as the knowledge of what the map lacked sank in. Chill turned to fear that it was possible this map would never be complete. It might never lead its patrons to what they sought, and it would be Bradán's burden to bear.

He stood still as the tempest ravaged the cottage. Staring at the map, he realized the answer might be found through a deeper look into the photograph that inspired it. He reached up to bring picture closer to the light and his tired eyes. Cool fingers entwined themselves around his heart. The pressure brought wetness to his eyes that blurred the photo further. He choked on a plug of grief.

The child in the picture was a mere infant, a girl-child swaddled in a patterned blanket that proclaimed her lineage to the world. She lay in a reed basket, the handle of which was partly visible in the upper left of the photo. The hand of the mother could be seen in part gripping the twisted stands of wicker. The girl's head was turned away, her profile in semi-sharp relief in the light of day. On her head was a few wisps of hair visible as little tufts. Bradán thought she looked like one of the sparrows that flitted amongst the hedges flanking his cottage.

A sparrow she may have been he thought, one of the little fallen ones spoken of by Matthew in his Gospel. Bradán found himself reciting the passage, "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father's will," the words sounding harsh like wet rust in the chill of the cottage air. His voice nearly failed him towards the end of the passage, throat closing on grief and helplessness.

The girl had passed suddenly, no warning. Her parents had laid her down to sleep in that basket while they tended to some chores around their own little cottage. The scent of buttermilk had been heavy on the mother's hands as she had tearfully, tenderly given the photograph to Bradán. The parents implored him to make his map, to find her soul. The burden of ignorance imposed by the Universe on her passing was excruciating for them to bear. The photograph was the only relic they possessed.

The truth as he knew it was that he did not know if he could finish the map. He did not know if the lines, the inks, and the precision of his man-made instruments could ever truly know what God knows. Bradán did not have to power to track every little sparrow fallen, an imperfect being charged with comforting those reeling from loss. The photograph was the last known sighting of their precious vessel, and he would chart a path to the soul of that sparrow, or lose himself in the process.

Bradán took up the dividers and a pen, cool metal heavier than they looked. The storm raged on while he hunched over the vellum. Somewhere over the water he find her. The map would be complete or he would dissolve into it. His hands moved, the ink soaked in. Dawn was hours away.

36 Days in Dreamtime

36 days in dreamtime and the awakening occurs here. Cold, dim, familiar. The cry of seabirds and the trumpeting of seals greets the rising of the sun and myself, such as it is.  I know this place. The stones of it dig through the fabric of my coat, into my back. I never wanted to see it again. 

Memory fades a little as I sit upright. I was dreaming, I thought. But maybe not. No, I wasn't dreaming it all. She was here, she was with us for 36 days in dreamtime. Now she is gone, and I am up here on the ridgeline overlooking a lonely island out in far south of the Atlantic where it is cold and gray but the birds and the seals are curious.

At least, that is what it feels like. Soul on ice. Numbness of the heart and a weariness that reaches deep into the bones. Hard not to feel like that when you granddaughter dies before she got to make a full orbit around the sun. I have company, though, which means the long journey back to the mainland and the sun will not be as hard as it could be.

Not that difficulty matters. I have a thicker skin now. Tougher hide around the beaten stone that is my heart. Hard work is the order of the day, hope I am up to it. This is one of the hardest things I have ever written because I stared at the blank page for three weeks, because the words would not come.

Maybe they still have not shown their faces. I do not know yet. But I had to start somewhere, and the familiar territory of my past experience with loss beckoned. The journey back starts now. It starts with a deep breath and memories. My soul pulls its coat tighter, and starts back down the mountain to the sea. I have 36 days in dreamtime to keep me going.

Simulacra and the War

Coastal notes, February 2nd. The night and the water conspire to unnerve.

Groundhog Day here at land's end, and the simulacra are still locked in combat. Tooth and nail, red in fang and claw, the hydrae come at me over the ether. I turned my back on them hours ago, staring out the window at the moon-lit liquid coal of the sea.

Still, they whisper. Imps tugging at my hindbrain, eager for reaction. Their voices rasp my eardrums in a flurry of catastrophic news and capitalistic blandishments. The one to take my peace of mind, the other to take my money. Mercifully, my blood does not boil. The faint scratchiness coming over the wireless speaker reminds me of leaves on concrete.

A colossal wave, a leviathan of water, slams the shore. Vibrations from it cause my lighter to jump, the speaker to tremble. Small and reminiscent of a Japanese stone lantern, the speaker is one of the few concessions to technology allowed in this monk's cell that is my cottage. As with many things of its ilk, its usefulness and purpose are two-edged. My electronic umbilical, it irritates but allows me to know what is going on back in the world I would sometimes rather shut out altogether. Blessing and curse for introverted information junkies such as I myself.

The wind is low this night. The usual sough is subdued, rarely making its presence known long the eaves of the cottage. When it does, I imagine a conversation between the wind and the radio. What they might discuss is beyond my ken, yet I cannot help but wonder if they share a motive to visit.

The moon, gravid and bright, waxes low in the sky. The argentine glow is diffracted by the restless skin of the ocean. Further in on the breakers, the light scintillates in the foamy curls of spray, diffusing and diffracting into uncountable diamonds that disappear into the surf. The breakers, too, whisper and moan up and down the beach. Wavelets hiss and burble, offering sweet counterpoint to the electronic anxiety offered up by the speaker.

It is dark but not pitch black inside the cottage. Dull embers on the hearth provide some warmth and tinge the air with a near subliminal glow. Reflected moonlight from the pale sand and graphite sea streams through the windows above my desk. The glow is enough to see, if not to work. This I find acceptable. I gave up working hours ago. The words would not come. Replacing them was an abstract, hazy thicket of thoughts winding around themselves, twining around the central core question I kept asking myself: Are we real or are we simulacra, convincing ourselves we are clever indeed in our wars and consumption? 

Behind me, a world bent on self-immolation in a firestorm of lunacy and strife seeps through the wireless conduit, trying to pull me back into the fight. I lack the energy to get up to turn it off. I continue staring out the window, my mind and the sea becoming mirrors. The speaker whispers still while the sea groans for my attention.  I breathe slow, deliberate, in spite of the simulacra and the war.

Dead Presidents Make My Teeth Hurt

It was somewhere east of Topeka and west of Kansas City that dead presidents made my jaw clench so hard I thought my teeth might shatter. Billboard big as day showing the latest lottery numbers somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 million. Jesus key-rist, the stab of angst and disappointment that went through my chest nearly made me drive off the road. Nothing like an unavoidable reminder of what you do not have to put a smudge on an otherwise good day. Fuck that. I don't need the hassle.

I was driving back from a work assignment. The sky, it was blue like the heart of the best day ever. I was feeling good, then this billboard shows up in my field of vision. 70 million in the pot, ladies and gentlemen. All I had to do was play.

The problem, as I see it, is that I need to win.

But I probably won't. That is the odds, especially if I don't play. Here's the thing: I don't need or want four vacation homes, a couple of yachts or a private jet. All I want is to make sure I can take care of my parents now the way they took care of me when I was young. All I want is to make sure that I can provide for my daughter, give her some help to send her on her way when she decides what she wants out of her future. All I want is to make sure I close the gap between more and enough.

All that, and some left over to help Syrian refugees, Ebola victims, and those who have no idea if they even get a next meal. What that billboard did was to make me realize that I am not a rich man. Not even close. I do not live in dire poverty, but seeing those numbers up there in broad daylight brought it all home that I am in a constant race between 'just enough' and 'more needed'. Nothing like a stark reminder of the money economy to smack your head, and your ego, up against the wall as if to remind you who is in charge here.

In broad daylight, the hot sting of tears and gritted teeth, and I am painfully aware of how inadequate I feel due to lack of money. The hot wire wrapped around my heart telling me there is so much more I could do, so many people I could help, if only I was was rich. If only I had money.

They say it is the root of all evil, this shared hallucination of what is valuable, of what we supposedly deem important. I say, it is really the root of all anxiety, and worthlessness, because without it we feel like we cannot accomplish anything. One of my favorite writers, John Thorne, once wrote of the paradox of living in the wetlands and marshes of Cajun country, "Survival is almost always possible; prosperity, almost never."* His succinct phrasing sums up the anxiety of living in the land of not-quite-enough.

Never enough. Never smart enough, fast enough, cunning enough. It is a feeling I wish I could shake, because I know better. I do. Still, the ghosts of dead presidents haunt my waking hours.

---

*From "Bayou Odyssey", a poignant, scintillating essay in John Thorne's excellent 1996 book, Serious Pig.

Magpie Tales 240: Dawes County Meditation

Photo by Tom Chambers via Tess at Magpie Tales

Wide open here in God's country

That means hearts as well as range

Loneliness not the sole province of cowboys

Rim of her world defined by stone

Scratching its defiance of the sky
She knew the legend of star-crossed love

Romeo and Juliet of a different hue

Whispers of their mad leap from the butte

But all she wanted was to escape

the barbed wire of her heart

Magpie Tales 210: Honeymoon at the Wartorn Arms Hotel

Lee Plaza Hotel, Detroit, photo by Bonnie Beechler via Magpie Tales

What innocence it was to have not known the smell of mildewcide, to not have marveled at the unearthly shades of blood wicking into a sponge, like liquid bruises. The acid-metal taste of fear and revulsion clinging to the back of the throat as the sirens wail grew louder, fingers clawing desperately at the door in a bid to escape before the uniforms and guns arrived to haul us all away. Life before the war seemed so quaint in retrospect. 

Under the blue-grey haze of cigarette smoke, you asked me once "What is the difference between the past here and the now there? You are different, you know, but one cannot pin down why." I remember laughing, a raspy howl roughened by Chinese tobacco and that awful cherry soda we drank in a bid to stay sober. I thought you were daft to ask such a silly question, then caught myself to realize that you spoke from innocence. You spoke from not having seen the ravaged past that I had.

I stood amongst the peeling paint and crumbling plaster, recalling the blank look on your upturned face, truly untroubled by the misery that would find you. Find us. The odor of mold and feces made my stomach turn. I took another drag on the cigarette cupped in my trembling left hand, seeking solace in smoke that did not reek of cordite and scorched pavement. Despite my nausea, could not force myself to leave. Your ghost demanded conversation.

"Well?" you said, the mottled wall behind you shining faintly through your eyes. A low rumble seeped through the floor and into my aching legs. The armored vehicle serving as my transport awaited outside. I slumped into the dust-clotted chair. I found it hard to meet those eyes of fog and gauze. You began to fade away even as I spoke into the clammy air of the room.

"The difference? It isn't just that was then, this is now!"

You sat up straight, gained some solidity. Your eyes widened.

"The difference, the one that matters…" I choked, gulped, nearly shouted, "That was Sarajevo where I had nothing. This is Detroit, where I had you. And you are gone."

My head slumped to the table. Her hand faded from my grasp. My cigarette burned itself out in the ashes of another dream. A groan permeated the chill dimness, whether the city or my soul giving vent, I could not tell.

Magpie Tales 207: Hero in New York

Universal Studios Lot, Instagram by sessepien via Magpie Tales

Come down, come down,

please, you gotta come down

Street knows your here

Perfume stronger than exhaust

Goddamnit, woman, come down

I ain't no Stanley, no Casanova, 

Juliet isn't your name,

No one calls me Romeo

Come down, once more,

Sirens' wail doesn't call me home

Only a desperate reminder

I'm Odysseus on the rocks

Magpie Tales 204: Pressing of the Apple

The Mill, 1964, by Andrew Wyeth via Magpie Tales

Crow calls thump a hollow chest

toll the bell, echoes disturbs the river

Beyond the press building it flows

Shivery black water absorbing the sun

Mausoleum mask framed by panes

Porcelain eyes drift with weather

While worn wood exhales

a century's worth of apples breath

Raise the tankard, quaff the cider

Try to slake the searing thirst

besetting a fractured heart 

As her footprints blurred with snow 

Ringing Bells

Mama knew my mind, would know this song
Mama knew my mind, would know this song
I muscle holler and a moan
I muscle holler and a moan
Black chords in the night

"You ever hear a new song, lyrics that sorta knock you out?" she said with a voice that purred even over the music and the traffic outside. Snow fell, light and jittery in the streetlight glow coming through the bar window. Someone laughed loud, there was coughing.

She was looking at me with eyes like emeralds and smoke. I managed not to jump at the sound of her voice. Jeans like paint, copper colored hair, boots sexy and dangerous-looking at the same time. The glass found its way to my suddenly dry mouth, hiding nervousness. Swallow. Pause. Answer.

"Once in a while. You?" I said. She smiled. It made me think of jaguars.

"Yes, I do. All the time. Even make them up, when the mood strikes." Smooth hands, coffee-colored, cradled a glass. She lifted it, sipped. White teeth, one slightly crooked behind lips just red enough. Some things are so beautiful you should burn your eyes out after you see them, because you never will again.

Daddy burnt the dirt, but the seed survived
Daddy burnt the dirt, but the seed survived
Holler and a moan
I muscle holler and a moan
Black chords in the night

The drink looked like a gin and tonic. That alone pleased me so much, I could not say why. Maybe it was just relief at not seeing another goddamn pink drink. I looked down at the bourbon I was nursing. It shimmered in the slightly nacreous bar light, honey and leather in a glass. I sipped again.

"So do you write songs?" I asked, not quite looking her in the eyes. Talk about distractions. My hands trembled slightly. Whiskey or nerves I could not tell.

"No, not really. I mean, I want to. I write a lot," she looked at me, then looked down at the bar, then over to the empty stage, "but a lot of things sound great at midnight that fall apart at lunch time, you know?"

I chuckled. Her admission energized me with confidence. A shot of that does a body good, knowing that Jesus will turn another year older before you can somehow make it home. Assuming you can find out where home could be. I turned on the bar stool, she didn't hear me sigh, and then I looked right in those pools of green. She had leaned in closer.

"What's your name, love?"

"Colleen. And you are...?" Blank mind. The music seemed to swell, drowning out my thoughts. How could I forget my own name. What was my name? Oh, Christ on a pogo stick, my name?

"Liam. It's Liam." I managed a smile. To my relief she smiled back. To my surprise, she started singing along with the jukebox.

The heavy bells, the heavy bells,the heavy bells
The heavy bells are tolling out a tune
The heavy bells, the heavy bells
Oh, God, I felt that metal move
You’re gonna wake up, you’re gonna wake up,
You’re gonna wake up, find the heavy bells
Toll their tune for you too

She had closed her eyes, tilting back her head to expose the loveliest neck I had ever seen. She sang, slightly off key with a throatiness that took my breath away. I gasped, staring. She opened her eyes, looked at me, smiling at my obvious lack of composure. To my shock, she reached out with one hand and took mine into it.

Her hand was warm, silky. The bar tilted in my vision. I squeezed her hand. She leaned in, enveloping me in a faint Tanqueray cloud. Her lips brushed my ear, and I heard her whisper "Merry Christmas, Liam. Merry Christmas." Across the street at Saints Patrick and James, the bells rang. Gazing back at her, dizzy to the point of near blackout, I grinned and answered.

"Merry Christmas, Colleen. I love you."

---

Italicized paragraphs are from a new favorite, "Heavy Bells", by J. Roddy Walston & the Business. Yeah, it rocks.

On the Cliff, By the Iron Sea

He usually only became aware of how long he had been running when the sun was high and the wind brisk off the water. His consciousness came into focus like a bubble popping, breath ragged between his lips. It was at those moments the runner would ask himself "How many years, Lord and Father, how many shall I carry you?"

The path led, as it seemed to always, along the edge of high cliffs. Green sod feathered itself out over hard lines of green-black basalt, the fractured planes of which slid sharp into the heaving sea. Slat spray and gulls engaged in a whirling dance of which the runner never tired. He looked forward to them when the sun would rise over the hills and plains after long nights of black and silver stars.

The cries of the gulls were as choirs to ears burned by wind and sun, years upon years of ceaseless motion with the relics upon his callused back. It had been so long since the stone cross in its thick ox-leather bag had been roped on to his back that he had no real memory of the occurence.

The sting of the whip across his calves he had never forgotten. The scars were still there, knurled ridges bulging from legs that resembled stones. The scars ached often, mostly at night when the runner entertained fantasies of walking, or heaven forbid, stopping to lay on the ground. He dreamed of it in his staggering sleep. The desire made him weep when it overtook him.

He cried less now. It attracted beasts in the night and made it difficult to breathe. Outrunning the one and overcoming the other were luxuries he could no longer afford. He grew terrified at the prospect of not making it to the mount, where he had been told he could lay down his burden forever. But the mount seemed no closer than the day his trial had begun.

He saw it now and then. Mostly in dreams. It was there shrouded in mist, far away along a curve in the coast. On this day, he saw it so clearly jutting up from a headland like a giant's fist. A fist that shook itself in his weary face.

"But why, Lord, does it grow no closer? I've run so long, endured so much, yet you offer no solace!" he yelped, wheezing. He was seized by a pang of regret soaked in fear, thinking he might be struck down for such impertinence. The cross in its leather sack hammered the knobs of his spine. He groaned and spat.

The wind continued its low moan over the grass. The sea mumbled and groaned on the rocks below. Neither offered comfort or counsel. The runner's feet continued their slow shambling run along the cliff. He did not hold his breath waiting for a sign.

The sun slid a few minutes of arc down the dome of the sky. The runner looked up as a passing shadow glissaded across his path, tracking over the shiny grime of his face. It was a gull, huge and gray, flying in a slow figure eight pattern just overhead. It seemed to be watching the runner. Its eyes luminous in the afternoon light remained fixed on him.

The runner grunted, shifted the weight of the leather bag so the straps would not dig in so deep. Off in the distance the mount was slowly fading into a mist rolling in off the ocean. The runner grunted, an idea taking shape in his head.

He watched the mist, waiting for it to swallow up the mount whole. His pace remained constant, but somehow he felt lighter on his feet. He felt the fear lifting from his belly and his heart. He raised his sunburned hands up to grasp the straps of the sack. Thumbs under the stiff rawhide, he waited still. The mount was nearly gone, only the tip showing up above the cloud bank. The runner allowed himself a faint smile.

The gull swooped lazily back and forth, eyes intent on the runner. The setting sun flashed on the tip of the mount, then it was gone, swathed in the thickening mist. The runner smiled openly. He lifted the sack off of his shoulders, veering closer to the edge of the cliff. Below he could see a cove where the water seemed deeply blue-green where it met the slick basalt knifing down in to it. Perhaps it was deeper there, he thought. 

The sack slid off his back, dangling by a strap in his hand. He ran faster, feeling lighter, and began to slowly whirl the sack in a windmill arc. Faster, faster, it spun, the sweat-stained leather looking like a giant heart in the blood light of the waning sun. The runner roared, a bell toll of pent-up anguish, and flung the sack over the cliff. He stopped, suddenly, almost falling over with dizziness after years of running.

The sack pinwheeled its way down to land with a subdued splash, sucked under by a huge wave that had come crashing out of the far sea. The gull shrieked and spiraled over the head of the runner, who hunched over panting with fear and relief. His legs trembled, as did his hands, but he had never felt so free as he did then.

The gull landed on the path some yard away in the direction of the mount. The runner turned to look. He saw that the mist was approaching them even now, dimming the sun and muffling the wind and sea. The mount was invisible.

The runner straightened up. He stretched, the lack of weight on his back novel but welcome. He waved to the gull, who then launched itself into the air with a squawk. It circled twice, then headed off into the mist towards the mount.

The runner grinned. He took the gull's flight as a sign, and began walking to follow the bird. Walking, he told himself. Walking. After all these years, he would walk to his meeting with Lord, and carry upon himself no burdens cast upon him by anyone but himself.

His heart began to slow. Peace was upon him, even as the sun slid below the edge of the sea.

 

Casting Pebbles in the Chasm

Brett sucked a lungful of cigarette smoke, harsh Vietnamese tobacco exhaled out in viscous tendrils that disappeared quickly in the updraft from the chasm. He found the hot brackishness oddly pleasant. He wondered when he would quit the habit after years of fruitless attempts.

The soldier laughed, iron-brittle in the winter air. Smoking would not be what killed him, he knew. So it really held no consequence for him. If anything killed him (and these days, one was never certain that death was final) it would be the stellar black below his dangling feet. The black, or some nightmare that dwelled within.

It was otherwise quiet there on the Rim. His platoon mates were dead, or nearly so, and scattered around behind him. The lucky ones died swiftly, before they glimpsed the horrors sweeping out of the depths into which Brett stared. The not so lucky died screaming their throats raw, plucking at their faces in vain. Brett wondered why he had been spared. There was no telling if he was blessed with fortune or if some other, greater terror awaited him.

His face went slack. The cigarette dangled from a bruised and bitten lip. Perhaps it was blood that held it so, the mere whisper of adhesion holding it in place. The soldier barely noticed. His thoughts were muddled, a smear of action and terror dulled by shock. Cold was creeping in. That minor circumstance troubled him more than he wanted to allow. If the suit was failing, well, then he truly stood not a chance.

A shiver passed up his spine, electric and cold. Training took over. His right hand tightened around the grip on his only remaining weapon, a late model projectile thrower that had turned out remarkably effective against the things coming out of the dark. A tactical refinement that now seemed to come too late to do much good. Brett sighed again. The intake of metallic air, tinged with the smell of alien rocks, brought his mind back to the helmet resting against his left hip.

"I should put it on," he said to the corpses and the darkness, "Gotta be safe." He chuckled.

The sun was going down. That meant the things would be on the move again soon. He thought he heard whispers rising up on the chasm breeze. "Just wind," he told himself. The hairs still stood up on his neck. He flung the cigarette into the void. Sitting still for a few heartbeats, he began to gather pebbles in his left hand. The stone was greenish, with an odd shimmer that was accentuated by the bluish light of the sun.

He filled his hand, then poured the pebbles into a small cone. He picked up a pebble and cast it into the chasm. "I coming for you!" he barked into the blackness. The wind seemed to slow with a minute change in direction. He chucked another pebble into the void.

"You!"
"And you!"

His voice began to echo. The wind slowed, stopped, then reversed direction. More pebbles flew, vanishing completely in the featureless void. The voice, if that is what they were, grew louder. The sibilant chorus sounded to Brett like the mutterings of lunatics. He thought he heard screams, one of which he could have sworn was something calling his name.

Shadows on the rim lengthened. The soldier cast in a final pebble. There was a shriek from below, rising on the ice-cold wind that had once again changed direction. Something down there laughed.

Brett picked up his helmet, settling it on the grit and blood-encrusted rim that served as the locking seat. The suit powered up, LED's blinking to full go status mode. Only the ammo indicator had dipped into the warning red zone. The supply was woefully short.

Brett sighed. Nothing was to be done. It was move or die. He leaned forward. The suit power surged in anticipation. Brett grinned, a wolfling all alone. "I'm coming for you," he whispered.

The groans and gnashings in the dark grew louder. Brett pushed up and out, leaping off the rim with the gun pointed forward. He dove into the chasm without a sound, swallowed up as if he never existed. There was light, but it never made it past the rim. The things in the dark embraced the soldier, and sang of his courage for millennia.

Where the Bodies are Buried

9:39 PM. News-weary this spring night. Troubled, wondering who will be a speaker for the dead.

I reckon this time I might irritate some folks, with the thoughts I can't help but spill. Spill I must, or burst. Or perhaps just toss and turn trying to shake off dreams that make me ill at ease. I listened overly much to the news today, in servitude to its terrible fascination with the burial ground of Tamerlan Tsarnaev. No one in this country wants the body, and the ones who claim him at all cannot and will not travel here to get him.

Not that I recommend they try it, unless they travel under heavy escort, in unmarked vehicles, in the small hours of the morning.

I do not say that because I bear any hatred towards the parents of the bombing suspect. Whatever their respective characters may be---and the news is not favorable---they were not the ones who made the bombs or set them off. So I have no room for hatred of them in my heart. Pity, maybe.

I say it because of what it seems the majority of society feels towards their children, and how society is looking not just for someone to hate, but to hate with savagery. The collective conscience is howling for blood, any blood, as the only justice for the horrific crimes committed by the brothers Tsarnaev.

I understand that rage, intertwined with the need for revenge. Speaking for myself, however, I do not want it to consume me or my life. I want justice, make no mistake about that. But I have a very hard time convincing myself that justice, in some fashion, has not already been served on the dead brother. Being shot multiple times and then having a relative run over you with a car is in many ways worse than a state-sponsored execution.

Which brings me back to the news today, and its talk of where Tamerlan will be buried. Or rather, not buried. So far no cemetery in Massachusetts has agreed to accept the body. Those cemeteries have, I am sure, well-founded concerns about having such a notorious person buried there.

Because the living, or some of the living, would never be satisfied to let the body alone. This desire for revenge or "eye for an eye" says more about the living, however, than it does about the dead. The living sometimes have what seems to be an insatiable desire for hatred and revenge.

The thing is, if Tamerlan had survived, he would be in custody now along with his brother. They both would be awaiting trial and whatever punishment society saw fit to levy against them. And I cannot say I am immune to the notion that they both deserve to die for what they did.

What I do not want to partake of is the savagery that I suspect many want to inflict not just on the younger brother, but on a corpse. A savagery we decry in others, I will add, and one not entirely square with our ideals of due process and decency.

Before you scream and howl at me, thinking me soft and not living in the real world, know this: I do want justice here. I do not defend or excuse anything the brothers did, because there is no excuse or justification. Due process has to be observed if we are to claim we support the system that allows justice to be served without mob rules...because this is a nation of laws.

I also believe that, like it or not, the disposition of the body is the province of the family, not the state, nor the madding crowd. And if we allow ourselves to get knotted up in revenge and hatred then we have given up on living good lives in spite of the awfulness that our fellow men have cast upon us.

I heard a report that an uncle, the one living in Maryland, had traveled to Massachusetts to prepare the body for a traditional Muslim funeral. He said something to the effect that "Everyone deserves to be buried. Only God can judge the dead." I suppose for those who have a belief in a higher power who judges all, that belief will let you imagine any fate you care to conjure up. Some folks might believe he is a martyr, others will see nothing but eternal damnation as reward for such atrocity. Maybe both sides are right, or neither.

Ultimately, it does not matter. If only God (assuming God exists) can judge, then that judgement will be beyond the knowledge of mere humans. If there is nothing beyond this mortal coil, then maybe most of society can rest assured the murderer has no chance at reward, just annihilation.

What matters is what we, the living, can do with the measure of our days. Why do we need to care where a criminal (or monster, by some lights) is buried? Timothy McVeigh, Adam Lanza and even Osama Bin Laden all received burials, of sorts. Does anyone spend their time trying to track those ashes? Does anyone really want to spend their days spitting on the graves of criminals? If so, perhaps those people should step back and decide whose life are they really living.

I personally do not care where the remains of Tamerlan Tsarnaev end up, as I have no plans to visit for any purpose. I understand that many people won't feel the same about the issue; the desire for revenge and catharsis is ingrained in the tribal psyche of us all. My heart aches for the victims of any such tragedy as what happened in Boston, and that will always be true. But as for myself, I'll let the damned lie where they may without wasting precious time and energy on them. I will not allow myself to be pinned to the strange attractor of unrequited hatred.

Taking Fire

Winter light of lapis and polished sterling flooded the room through the paired windows. The stone around the openings flared outward into the room, magnifying the illumination to make the infirmary cell much brighter than Rāhula would have imagined. He was grateful, prayers of thanks going up every morning when the sun slipped into his room.

The old monk lay still, his eyes tracking the progress of snow finches across the flagstone patio outside the window. His bed had been pushed close to the window to afford a view out. The weight of the blankets and bandages served as warm anchors. But it was the pain in his skin that acted as biggest shackle. Rāhula's eyes twitched in time with the hopping birds, his racing mind considering that the pain was simply another attachment. The task, he thought, was to consume the horrible ache before it consumed him.

The smell of gasoline lingered as a phantom haunt in his nostrils. Blinding sunlight and the horrified screams of passers-by kaleidoscoped across his memory. He gritted his teeth. Tears surged, searing his dry eyes. Rapid blinks cleared his vision. The snow finches snapped into sharp focus.

Rāhula smiled, a reflex action at odds with his will, but felt good. Watching the finches peck at the black scatterings of nyjer seeds on the snow, Rāhula decided then that he would never again set himself afire for anyone. Not the government, not the news, not even himself.

Magpie Tales 151: Larva

Image via Tess at Magpie Tales

Swallowing the scrip
to leave the hell I'm living
Silence your laughter!

Guard the Flame (Sunday Meditation #26)

Chimneys without caps,
Our brightly burning fires doused
Deadly metal rain

Broken Voids

December 14th, 10:27 PM. Vile headache from parsing news of the latest horrific gun violence tragedy. Rain falls, and thoughts of bed beckon me.

---

There comes a time where the left and the right, the liberal and the conservative, the 'must-control' and the 'cowboy militia' crowd simply must cease to talk, blather and yell.

They simply must be silent...unless they want to join us devastated human beings in a scream of volcanic anguish that surely could be heard at the edges of the universe.

Now is not the time to squabble about the deadly tools that usurp our hearts with broken voids. Now is the time for considered reflection, to fill those voids with love.

Magpie Tales 146: Metronomic Incarceration

Object to be Destroyed by Man Ray, via Magpie Tales

Breath frosts rippled glass,

Brown falling leaves, she blinks, sways,

Soul tick-tocks away