BLACK TEA PROSE
Stories + Essays
Gregory O'Toole, M.A.
www.otoole.info
gregory.otoole@gmail.com
Black Tea Prose Stories
1. Hot Springs Bantor
2. Two Bedroom Apartment
3. Fire in the Woods
4. Leonard Treadway
5. Dr Colorado
6. An Alcoholic in the Newsroom
7. ANWR
8. RACR
9. Ten Years After
10. Leaders
11. Global Justice AS
12. Remembering Smokey
13. Does God Exist
14. Double helix 0s and 1s
15. Great Forgetting
16. The Tony Danza Show and Me
17. All the Worlds Energy This Side of the Access Digital Divide
18. Early Morning MTV
19. Oh Those Denver Friday Nights
20. Like a Sociological Phoenix
21. I Knew Fahrenheit 911
22. The Psychology of Comedy
23. Robert Motherwell and the ATL
2
All the Worlds Energy this Side of the Access Digital Divide
09 February 2006
For the first time in the history of mankind, the world and many
millions of its inhabitants are physically, and intellectually,
connected. This network, as most of us know well, is called the
Internet. The network is constantly transmitting messages. Code.
Information. Data. It is powered by electricity. The Internet transfers
electricity. Therefore, we can safely say this: the internet is a
message-concept transport entity.
My wife sold her 1995 Jeep Wrangler recently. Shed had it for a
couple of years. It was her main source of mechanized transportation
before we met. Since then, shes mainly been using my newer, safer,
smother-driving Ford Explorer to drive herself back and forth to work
everyday. The Jeep just sat in the driveway using up space and two
hundred of our earned dollars each month in loan payments and
insurance.
She posted it online for free a while back. She used a widely
utilized, populated and trafficked web site. She put up a few
photographs. No one called. Months later she decided the $55.00-untilyour-car-sells package on www.cars.com might be more the way to go.
That was Saturday afternoon when that decision was made. By Saturday
evening the advertisement was up and running with six photographs and a
few brief selling points. On Sunday she got her first calls of
interest. On Monday a gentleman said hed like to come and see the Jeep
in person. On Tuesday morning he bought it.
As I was walking home from work at the University of Denver on
Wednesday evening, the day after the aforementioned sale, I was
thinking about what my wife, Carey, had said about how this man had
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been behaving since he had agreed to purchase the vehicle. Hed been
running all over town, she told me on the phone Tuesday afternoon,
making sure the title transfer and license plates and DMV paper work
were all in order. He was excited, she confirmed, and very obviously
was not wanting to loose hold of the situation that would allow him to
secure this purchase. You see, the title transfer was set to happen on
Friday, the guy knew he was getting a deal with the agreed purchase
price, and he wasnt about to let it slip away. Makes perfect sense to
me.
So Im thinking of this guy as Im crossing the street on campus.
Im thinking about the serendipitous events (or luck) of getting the
Jeep sold, out of our hair, saving us money, and being alleviated of
these bills. Im thinking this was a good thing that happened for us. Im
thinking how Carey said the guy got a good deal, knows he's getting
this good deal and how I am happy and pleased that he got his good
deal. As I was walking I wondered if he was the kind of guy who gets
lucky with things in life often. If he's good to people and so gets
treated well in return. I wonder if he is used to getting good deals.
I'm walking and considering this. I'm approaching a woman on the
sidewalk who seems to be a young mother escorting her two daughters
into the athletic center where I imagine they will be attending their
weekly gymnastics lessons, or swim meet, or something else along those
lines. Daughter A, who is maybe eleven years old, is dancing up ahead
of her mother and sister, B. A is looking to me like she's amped up.
She's hyper, as a lot of eleven year old girls, I would imagine, are.
She's dancing, and skipping and twirling and singing a good ten paces
ahead of Mother and B. B, on the other hand, is tired. She seems so,
anyway. She is holding back, not dancing or singing, but leaning in to
her mother, mothers right arm cradling her in comfort. They are walking
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slowly. I hear Mother, possibly, consoling her daughter, saying
something nice to her, something encouraging. Perhaps B was not in any
state to be entering into yet another session of high-diving, treading
water, flipping on the floor mats, balancing on the balance beam. It
seemed to me that B was just plain old tired. I was tired, too. I bet
Mother would have taken a nap if one was offered her. A, however, was
like Man O'War on Red Bull.
Just as I was passing the threesome to their right, I witnessed A
take note that Mother and B were coming to some conclusion. A stopped
in mid plies, turned around, and walked hurriedly back to her sister.
She took her sister's hands and said this: Let's transfer some energy.
A, with all her pent up activity, knew that her sister, B, was not
feeling up to par, and it was generally agreed upon, complete with
Mother's encouragement, that not only should they try this remedy, but
that, for them, it was proven to work.
Hold your sister's hand and close your eyes until you get to the
door: Mother said, arm still around B's shoulder. You have to think
about it, she said, you have to want it to happen. By then I was too
far past the family to hear anymore conversation. I started thinking
about this family and how they'd probably learned this at some point:
energy transference, and that they'd been practicing it when needed
from time to time. This being one of those times.
When I got home I told Carey about Mother, A, and B and what I'd
heard them say and how it made me think about energy transference and
the internet and how I usually felt after sitting at the connected
computer for so many hours. I usually felt oddly energized, sitting
there at the keyboard. I also felt slightly dazed, and somewhat
disoriented. But niether of these latter two symptoms ever arose in a
computing session until after I got up from the machine, until after I
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was no longer connected. I wondered, I told her, if the internet was
possibly transferring more than just data. I wondered if the internet
could be sending and receiving not only electronic energy, but life
energy the same way that a sister in high spirits can uplift her
downtrodden sibling.
In Buddhist philosophy, Carey informed me, the transference of
life energy from one person to another is called Tonglen. For many,
it's been known to work. Tonglen, transferring energy, has been a
practiced methodology of human compassion for thousands of years. Most
of the people in Asia, it turns out, would look at you funny if you
believed that this DIDN'T work. McLuhan said that media are simply an
extension of ourselves. What if the internet is allowing for global,
long-distance Tonglen. This would be Tonglen on a massive, massive
scale. Potential energy transference from 888 million people. It would
be a secondary symptom of the network, a use that was never planned for
but yet came out of the completion of the system. What if the internet
is transferring life energy, as well as jpgs, and we just dont yet know
it?
6
An Alcoholic in the Newsroom
I just witnessed one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen.
Since I started here, one of the sales guys in this office has
consistently been somewhat of an obnoxious loudmouth. And Although I
didn't pay too much attention, I figured he was one of those people who
seeks a lot of attention. On the surface, he appears relatively stable
and professionally successful. But my interpretation was always that he
wasn't as cool and collected as he liked to let on.
About a week ago he was finishing up moving into a new place
(apparently he was relocating for proximity). Right around this time he
stopped showing up for work. He called into the office and said he was
sick. A day later word around the office was that his ex-wife had
checked him into Pathways, one of the many alcohol and drug abuse
centers in the valley.
A few more days went by, he got out and went home, only to call
in sick again to work, saying his medication made him over sleep. He
disappeared again for several more days, during which time a worker in
another office reported getting a message from him, and now she was
worried he was 'suicidal'. No one could find Salesguy's cabin to go
check on him so they called the Sheriff. I never heard what they found.
Then, late this morning, through a dark and unexpected stormy
rainóabout a week after our Salesguy first went missingóI came into the
office and there he is in the corner of the front room with the
business manager and the receptionist staring at him. I didn't know
right at first if he was severely drunk, had over-dosed on something or
was possibly even holding these people hostage, but I knew without a
doubt he was in a desperate stateóI could see it in his face.
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I tried to figure out exactly what it was that I had walked into.
At first, I saw him swaggering around, completely bloated and puffy and
purple all over. His head was huge and swollen. He looked like he
hadn't slept, bathed or even changed clothes in weeks. This came as
somewhat of a shocking transformation from the clean cut sales
associate we were all accustomed to seeing only a week before.
As I stepped closer, the worst part was this grown man had
watery, scared, crying eyes that couldn't focus on anything. He was
trying to make sentences but talked like a little boy, stuttering and
pleading. His whole body was shaking and shaking and he kept saying he
couldn't stop. He kept taking little steps backwards whenever someone
talked to him or if he could see you were looking at him.
His hands were stiff and rigid like on a corpse, like they were
full of a crazy tension he couldn't control. He knew he was having
DT's, he said, and "the shakes" and was terrified now because "the
detox will take over the next 48 hours" and he said how torturous it
was going to be, like he'd been through it before. I thought how
disturbing and twisted it is that he did this to himself.
After the manager got him into the car, they drove off to take
him back to the emergency room. The receptionist said he'd come in
about a half-hour before I did. She said he had driven by the office
five or six times before building up enough nerve to come inside. And
when he finally did, he was carrying a bottle of vodka wrapped in a
brown paper bag.
When I walked in the door he shook, barely able to hold the
plastic bottle of 7-Up he was now trying to drink. He looked at me and
said "GregÖplease, don't ever drink and driveÖ" clutching his trembling
and swollen hands as a sort of pleading gesture to his pitiful and
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sorrowed statement. The second half of which I was unable to
comprehend.
After a minute of silence he said, "She won't give me another
slug..." Then they walked out the door and drove off through the rain.
9
ANWR: The Madness Continues
Just after I found out Chicago is in a mid-April heat wave and the
mercury in NYC hit 90 yesterday, I heard on CNN early this morning in a
special span-America report that the latest decision in the drilling
debate in the Alaskan Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has been left up
to President Bush. That's the same President Bush born and raised in a
Texas oil family. The same President Bush with oval office and tuxedo
champagne socials filled to the gills with well dressed businesspolitical friends and supporters who lean ever so slightly toward the
Republican left when it comes to environmental issues. And the same
President Bush who is now trying to urge the Senate to give in, to join
the dark side, and pass his proposed energy bill which opens up the
remaining 5% of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration.
As it turns out, what my reporter was getting at is that the
comprehensive energy bill created by Bush back in May passed through
the House of Representatives in August like bad fish. Big surprise
there. He claims the new bill will render America independent of all
other oil producing countries and keep our cities from experiencing
blackouts and moronically high gas prices again this summer. That would
be ideal, Mr. President, but the fact of the matter is, there isn't
enough oil under the coastline of the ANWR to make that much
difference. In fact, it would take 10 years or more to bring the
product to market and then would only satisfy maybe six months of our
national demand. The real change this whole operation would bring about
is the destruction of the oldest and most self-sufficient Eco-system
left on the planet.
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Bush said his plan "promotes conservation ... and supports the
development of fuel-efficient vehicles." This is an odd statement when
the conservationists in this issue are the ones opposing his plan. I
see no signs of promoting conservation of any kind. I do see, however,
the definite possibilities of severe and irreversible destruction to
the land, the delicate plant life, the Gwich’in Indian tribe, the
caribou, moose, wolves, ground squirrel, polar bear, muskoxen, arctic
fox, wolverines, grizzlies, and snow geese who have survived in this
region for thousands of years.
The President also said in his weekly address this Saturday in
another effort to convince the Senate and other opponents to the bill
that "modern technology could bring oil to the surface with little
damage to the wilderness." COULD is a dangerous word to use in this
context, George. Regardless of what science has shown us over the past
hundred years, if I really, really wanted to I bet I COULD come up with
a cure for the common cold, moonlighting at the workbench in my
basement. But you keep trying, we are all aware of the pressure you
must be feeling from your friends and co-workers.
I also understand one of the benefits of drilling in Alaska is
the national security we are promised. But wouldn't the most efficient
way to reduce oil imports be to increase fuel efficiency standards in
our country so less oil is needed? This is 2002, folks, the technology
is HERE. We've all heard of the Honda Civic—Hybrid? Half gasoline half
electric engine. The thing gets 51 miles to the gallon. I have a
feeling Honda wouldn't charge for the Hybrid's mechanical blue prints
anywhere near the billions of dollars the White House is prepared to
spend on the drilling.
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How about instead of pressuring concerned Americans into destroying one
of the last wild places on Earth, George, do a little leaning on the
automotive and domestic travel groups and set up some rigorous goals
for the next several years. And while you are at it, maybe you could
have someone explain to me why the proposal in November of last year to
construct an electric monorail system connecting Denver to Aspen and
all the hot spendy tourist spots in between was denied.
For the intelligent individuals out there who would like to help
the cause there are several places you can go. For starters click on
www.defenders.org and you'll get all the information you need to help
protect the wild. There is still hope.
Here are some encouraging words from Senate Majority Leader Tom
Daschle (D/SD): "I have said for a long time that the votes for
(drilling in the) ANWR are not there. They will be lucky to get 50,
much less 60. That is one issue we feel strongly about." Democrats, who
hold 50 of the Senate's 100 seats, are "virtually unanimous" in their
opposition.
Location of the ANWR: Northeast corner of Alaska; North Slope of
the Brooks Range to the Arctic Ocean. Stay tuned for the next
installment of the VAGABOND NOTEBOOK: National Forests and The Bush
administration works behind the scenes to dismantle the Roadless Area
Conservation Rule.
from the VAGABOND NOTEBOOK, an editorial by Gregory O'Toole printed
weekly in the Bigfork Eagle; Bigfork, Montana.
12
Science, Astronomy, and the Existence of God
Perhaps the grand-daddy of all perennial existentialist questions, the
dispute that has sparked a hundred wars, inspired a thousand theories,
founded entire schools of analysis, and squared off time and time again
in the heavy weight ring with the scientific method is this: Does God
exist?
In a ninety minute lecture followed by a two-hour question and
answer forum in Sturm Auditorium on the University of Denver campus
Friday night, geologist, veteran high school science teacher, expresident of a national atheist union, and reformed Christian, John
Clayton addressed this ongoing and humanly universal uncertainty. With
an arsenal of scientific data, Clayton set out to openly elucidate the
rationale of impossibility, by means of mathematical probability, that
God is essential to the very existence of our universe.
John Clayton has been teaching science in South Bend, Indiana for
forty-one years. As devout atheist until his early twenties, Clayton
was part of the belief group that spawned the infamous Madeline Murray
O'Hair. Clayton says when he began looking for answers to the questions
he knew he could not answer as an atheist, he eventually turned to
Christianity and the Bible. Lecturing around the country in front of
some forty audiences a year, John admits we all make "poor judgments
and foolish mistakes" when referring to his past as a non-believer in
God.
Dominating the first half of his Friday night lecture was
Clayton's reference to the magnitude of beauty over functionality in
nature. A prime example was made of the thirteenth-century
mathematician, Leonardo Pisano Fibonacci (1170-1250), whose discovery
of relational numbers lead to what is known and utilized in many fields
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today as the Fibonacci Curve. The Fibonacci Curve began with the
Fibonacci numbers, a discovery all its own. The thirteenth century
mathematician discovered that by adding numbers consecutively, where
the sum of the two numbers being added becomes the next number in a
string, an obvious and logical pattern is formed: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8,
13, ... (add any two numbers in the string to get the next). With this
idea in mind, Fibonacci further calculated that when dividing each
single number by its former, the result, as was shown by Clayton with
his prepared transparencies set atop a bulky and seemingly antique
opaque projector, "is always the same number: 1.6180339887."
Fibonacci utilized these numbers, creating a series of rectangles
with side lengths corresponding to his numbers in succession. In other
words, each adjacent rectangle created, would have a set of sides which
equaled the sum of the two preceding numbers in the string. When a
curve was drawn connecting the intersecting corners of these
rectangles, what was formulated has come to be known as the Fibonacci
Curve.
Clayton went on to visualize for his audience through a prepared
slide show examples of how and where the Fibonacci Curve exists in
nature today.
"Why is it," Clayton asked, pacing around the dimly lit stage,
"that the Fibonacci Curve is apparent in the outreaching arms of the
galaxy?" (Clayton circling the singular red dot of an infrared pointer
on a twelve foot slide projection of the Milky Way, and with each new
mention, clicked to a photographic example of what he was describing.)
"The Fibonacci Curve," Clayton continued, "is in the waves of the
ocean. The Fibonacci Curve is in your water swirling down the drain.
The Fibonacci Curve is in subatomic particles in zero gravity. The
Fibonacci Curve is in snail shells. The Fibonacci Curve is in the horns
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of every living animal on earth. The Fibonacci Curve is in the teeth of
the grizzly bear. The Fibonacci Curve is in every beak of every bird.
It's in flowers, the tail of the chameleon, spider webs, The Fibonacci
Curve is in fingerprints. The Fibonacci Curve is in the helical
structure of DNA. There are twenty-six Fibonacci Curves is in the human
brain. The Fibonacci Curve is in the umbilical chord of the human
baby..."
The lively and spirited science teacher from Indiana had a point:
"These elements of nature are beautiful, and 'chance' will not select
beauty, but an intelligence will."
In the second half of his talk, Clayton went on to demonstrate a
multitude of mathematical constants in nature which must occur
simultaneously for the solar system to exist as we know it today. The
enormously improbable ratios, or more simply, the highly unlikely
chances of each of these necessary constants falling into place when
they are required and where they are required without the help of a
creator, Clayton explained, is about one in 36,000,000,000,000,000. In
comparison, Clayton added, "The probability of you jumping out of an
airplane from ten thousand feet with nothing on but your birthday suit
and living to tell about it is one in ten million, according to the
National Parachute Association."
Concluding with an open two-hour question and answer period,
Clayton mused on a variety of topics including Spectrographic Analysis
(which measures amounts of helium and hydrogen on the sun, and is used
to figure out how much of its original fuel the sun still retains:
98%), and when directly asked about his feelings on evolution, Clayton
responded, "There is no evolution-creation controversy... Charles
Darwin did not teach anything that you would find (in conflict) with
the Bible."
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A young teacher in the audience raised her hand and offered "the
origin of species is completely separate from natural selection...".
"That," Clayton replied, "is exactly my point."
After fielding a few more questions from the thoughtful audience,
the 1991 South Bend Community School Corporation High School Teacher of
the Year offered up, as somewhat of a staple to the evenings
discussions, his favorite statement from the physicist Albert Einstein:
"Religion without science is lame. Science without religion is blind."
09/26/03
16
Double Helix 0s and 1s
From unknown Zone | DMSpace Editorial
Anyone who has ever submitted work to a literary publication of any
kind knows of the intense competition for acceptance. There are rules
to follow. The folks that run these publications will tell you over and
over again to read the guidelines for submission, the format and style
they accept. I have found that these somewhat ambiguously proclaimed
parameters reflect eras, or times and styles from the literary past.
Some want composers who write like Charles Bukowski and Jim Carroll
maybe
because that’s what their readers digest. However, simultaneously this
same magazine will turn you away if you “write too much like Ginsberg”
because, although Ginsberg was as hot as they come in 1956, riding in
the wake of the infamous Six Gallery reading; and again in 1994, three
years before his death, with Cosmopolitan Greetings: Writings from
1986-92, laughing up there on the Tonight Show stage--to any selfrespecting literary arts periodical, too much reiteration is not a good
thing. But either way you look at why you were denied--or accepted--the
fact of the matter is that the jury board, or solitary editor, most
likely based their decision on
aesthetic ideals from the past. I don’t know for sure whether or not
this will continue to be of major concern as we approach a deeper
emersion into and beyond the digital realm.
It seems to be of a rather grand contradiction to acknowledge a humanly
progressive metaphysical existence, and simultaneously be stuck,
continually making reference, and limiting our communicative values to
these parameters which were set at a very specific time--and lasted a
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distinguished amount of time--in the past.
The digital computer is dead, writes media theorist Chris Chesher. But
the digital computer is not only dead, the intrinsic trait that does
the killing, is what simultaneously renders the digital nature of
computers omnipresent in technologies. It is dead not because some
cyber punk ran amuck and discovered civil liberation in severing an
essential life support apparatus, or took a Louisville Slugger to their
CPU, but figuratively, in that the epistemological redundancy of the
phrase is too great to survive even the wimpiest of critical analyses.
The current pervasive state of binary-based entities is enough to
understand Chesher’s point, that there is no longer the necessity to
describe things as digital, because everything is digital. And if it is
not digital right at the moment the bastard offspring of analogous
technology will most likely soon find itself running on a familiar
structure of Double Helix 0s and 1s.
It is interesting to consider that when the digital building block of
all technologies is ultimately ubiquitous, everyone but the technicians
and coders may continue to view these technologies as analogous. In
other words, all things may be digital under the hood, but what is most
recognizable to the human eye are attributes of technologies
represented by some physically measurable quantity, such as weight,
length, voltage, etc. (Oxford English Dictionary).
Call me crazy, but
I do not see this changing any time soon. When we interact with each
other, for example, we recognize the other’s hair color, body shape,
height, facial proportions, intelligence level, personality, etc. We
don’t meet someone on the street and wonder about their DNA, yet all of
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these traits are biological characteristics determined by that DNA. Why
don’t we cut out the middleman and get right to the source?
19
Slide Show by Dr. Colorado
Gus' Tavern, a one-time mill-workers-home-turned-saloon in Pueblo,
Colorado has been forever etched in history by the Guinness Book of
World Records. It's feat? Most beers sold per square foot.
This was just one of the tavern facts brought to light in a slide
show Tuesday night in Nelson Hall by University of Colorado at Denver
professor, Doug Noal; more aptly known in his Rocky Mountain
architectural and historical circles as "Dr. Colorado". In his lecture,
the good doctor screened through a number of aged photographs and spoke
of the pioneering and mining days of Denver, Boulder, Blackhawk and
many of the smaller towns around the nations highest state.
Immigrant saloons were of focus for much of Noal's relatively
casual and refreshingly light-hearted discussion. Christopher Columbus
Hall, the first Italian bar in the state, was opened in the late 1800s
by Siro Mangini. "In those days, it was the Italians who did all the
hard labor," Noal disclosed over a yellowed black and white photograph
of a few thin, young, dark-haired entrepreneurs, "The hall sat at 2219
Larimer Street, where it still stands today...only now it's called El
Bronco."
The Buckhorn Exchange at 10th and Osage has had every U.S.
President since Teddy Roosevelt as their guest, and incidentally was
the first tavern in Colorado to have a liquor license.
A poor blue collar Swiss immigrant named Spalti who came to
Colorado in the mid 1800s was the subject of the "Horatio Alger Story"
of the night. As a hard-working and dedicated entrepreneur, Spalti
trudged up into the hills to cut down trees and dig for coal to bring
back down and sell door-to-door to the citizens of Denver. He did so
well that in 1877 he opened what he then called the Centennial Hotel at
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1900 Market Street. Still, Noal explained, he secured wood and coal for
the people, and his business grew. In 1879 Spalti put an addition on
his hotel and was then referred by the city board as not only a
business man of wood, coal, and hotel, but also as a holder of "Real
Estate". In 1881, with further additions to his portfolio of
investments, Spalti was regarded now as a "Capitalist". In 1916 he
died, respected as a member of the honorary council.
Years of persistent research is what has built up Doug Noal's
wealthy bank of Colorado historical knowledge. When asked by an
audience member what he was working on now, Noal briefly explained his
current book "Where Did the 125 Million Go?" The book examines the tax
dollars that come from Colorado's gaming commission part of which is
then routed to fund the renovations of historic landmarks and railroad
centers throughout the state. This is some of what the well-publicized
debate over "Amendment 33" is all about. Noal stated, "So, if you all
vote 'NO' on 33, there will be no more funds or preservation for
Colorado."
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Early Morning MTV and the Good Judge James Robertson
21 December 2005
Early this morning, for the first time in years, I saw a music video on
MTV. I awoke at nearly seven a.m., felt rested, and could not fall back
to sleep, so--not feeling quite ready to dive back into the current
Herman Hesse novel--on the television went. I have not been tuned into
the grand-daddy of early 1980s Music Television in so long that I don't
know if Kurt Loder is still there or not. I would hope, for nostalgia
sake, that he is. I also hope that Yo! MTV Raps is still bringing home
the goodies every afternoon, but somehow I doubt it. What I did see was
Paul Hewson, a.k.a. Bono, being goofily featured in the audio-visual
version of "Original of the Species". In my opinion, the song is
probably the most dynamic on their newest album, "How To Dismantle An
Atomic Bomb," for a lot of reasons. And for those reasons, its another
great electro-rocker by one of the best bands in the history of rock
and roll. But those guys better be careful, they are fast approaching
free and earned entrance into the Cliched Pop Sluts Hall of Fame (see
www.clichedpopslutshalloffame.com for more). The entire video was
nothing more than a shot of Bono dramatically lip syncing into the
camera a foot from his face. He even goes as far as taking off his rosy
wrap-around sunglasses and staring, really-sincere-like, into the lens.
Ooooh... He does some sort of brazier model pose late in the song,
arching his shirt-sleeve arms over his head. I want to know who told
the man to do this stuff? Who is the director of this thing? I could
query Google and have the answer, but I don't even want to know,
really. At least he didn't fall down on the ground, panting like Jim
Morrison at the end. That finale was saved for a very brief cameo of
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Larry Mullen, Adam Clayton, and then, of course, The Edge, lip syncing
his backup vocals. Jesus. Those guys went, wonderfully, tastefully, and
interestingly, from Rattle N Hum (and before, of course, but I like to
talk about that album) singing with Gospel Choirs in the Bronx to
opening up the Pop tour at Walmart. It's been a brilliant career, but
to be brilliant, one must retain the characteristic of genuine-ness.
This video must have been shot in one hour or less for some extra
spending money. Remember the video for the song "One"? Just a buffalo
running across the plain for 3.5 minutes? Now that's a video.
The other thing I inevitably ran into on the tube, flipping channels,
trying to recover from my early morning Bono overdose, was the local
news telling about George W's newest federal/international offense:
bugging private phone lines without court consent. So, let me see,
that's 1.) Breach of international civil rights by way of torturing
suspects of various crimes (Guantanamo Bay); 2.) Violation of
Constitutional Amendment Number One: you can't pay to have fictional
news casts sketched in favor of the President and then tell people they
are objective journalism (Medicare Plan Commercials inserted into news
casts around the country); 3.) Violation of mandatory separation of
Church and State (Harriet Miers, "because she is a good Christian");
and now, 4.) Illegal wire taps. Even Judge James Robertson, one of
Bush's 11 "Secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court" judges quit
today because he knows what they are doing is not right. I am confused
here because President Clinton was nearly impeached for lying about a
blowjob.
But then they started talking about Saddam's trial and said he showed
up yesterday and asked for a break so that he could pray. I didn't see
the harm in that, but I am not the judge. The judge said no. Then the
newscaster piped in some good information, something the people at
23
Denver News 9 or CNN or whoever it was thought the rest of us needed to
be let in on, and informed the viewers that "Saddam then sat quietly in
his chair and didn't say anything." The anchorman continued, "...in
that time," he said, "Saddam might have been praying to himself." I am
going to keep watching that news channel because the newscasters can
read people's minds.
24
Fire in the Missouri Woods
Stillwater, MN (on the St. Croix)—I was thinking last night on
the drive up through Eau Claire, Wisconsin—in an attempt to find
Somerset—about the fire in the camp village in Lester, Missouri on
night three of the shows down there, earlier this summer, and how it
easily could have destroyed the entire Mark Twain National Forest had
the ground and trees not been thoroughly dampened by the constant rains
in the days prior to the accident.
I had been sitting on the tailgate of the truck, talking and
joking-- laughing mostly-- with Arendo, a mandolin picker and harp
blower up from Arkansas who was camped out next to us along with some
young couple under their laundry line tarpaulin lean-to shanty. I had
never met these kids before.
It was already late into the third night of the festivals and
folks were getting back from the show around then. The two of us had
arrived earlier sitting contentedly, back in camp village and could
feel things start to stir. Before most people got back to their tents
and campfires the village was serene and still, a moody, calming place
hung thick with midnight fog. The full moon shone heavily through the
rain soaked haze that caused these tree covered hills, just north of
the Ozarks to appear as if in costume for a short spell, parading as
the Great Smokey Mountains of southern Tennessee, eerie and spooked
with the blue-ness and all.
Arendo finished a sentence, something like "...and I was so drunk
then I couldn't roll a cigarette to save my holy head---so what I did
then was..." and as if on queue a low pitched rumbling explosion filled
the silent night-- and there was silence no more. I craned my neck
around the back end of the truck to find the entire campsite
25
illuminated in a hellish red-orange heat. The group of campers next to
us-- young kids who knew not the first thing about surviving out of
doors, away from their Midwestern suburban nightlife beer cases and
state college fraternity socials-- panicked, let out piercing
caterwauls,jumping back shouting in confusion about water buckets and
what now to do that the trees were instantly ablaze. The flames reached
higher, devouring the thick oxygen and fuel, growing to over twentyfive feet high in a matter of seconds. The base of the blaze quickly
spanned some twenty feet across and showed no signs of slowing, feeding
itself on the underbrush that covered the ground beneath it. I saw the
tops of the flames reaching to the trees above and licking the branches
that, at first, only a minute before in perspective, seemed so high up
and safely out of range.
I heard someone in the crowd shout and wail about the five gallon
gas can that was now completely engulfed in flames and would surely
blow any second. Some dark silhouetted figure pushed at it and batted
it around the base of the verve with a ten foot branch. I backed up.
Now obvious to everyone present, one of these fools in a dim-witted fit
of frustration had used the gasoline as fuel for their campfire,
pouring it straight from the red metal can onto open flame, most likely
since his rain-drenched firewood would not
burn to his satisfaction.
And now these were the same fools that stood around, nervous and
sweating, exchanging bug-eyed faces, bouncing back at each other then
back at the flames as the entire forest stood in jeopardy.
Another sharp minded soul from a nearby camp came running with a
bucket of water! A bucket full of water for a gasoline fire. It seems
most of our third grade teachers were right when explaining never
to throw water on a gas or oil fire (water and oil do NOT mix!), since
it only causes the flames to spread, ultimately making your situation
26
that much worse. (This grown man who came running with the bucket of
water and threw it into the base of the flames, I found out later, is a
fire safety manager of some sort on a commercial shipping barge off the
coast of Cape Cod. I also found out right from the source that he and
his co-workers have numerous ways of falsifying their monthly drug
tests.)
Now the red beast raged over thirty-five feet high, took on a
brand new life all it's own. They all just backed up and stared.
With the decision in my head that although I had nothing to do
with the ignition of this fire, something had to be done. It started
un-naturally with a chemical liquid that has no place in the woods in
the first place. I was not going to let it destroy the trees of this
forest, or any of the thousands of people in them. I picked up the
longest, flattest splint of firewood nearly within arms reach, and
started digging and throwing wet soil into the base of the flames.
Arendo had the same idea at the same moment and as twenty or so foolish
young campers-- most of them from the group that caused the explosion-stood by in horror with hot, orange faces glowing guilty expressions in
the night, Arendo and I kept digging up dirt and throwing as much as
possible over and over until the fire began to slow... then to shrink.
Then slowly, very slowly, it died, leaving the charred growth and
blackened trunks running up to smoking leaves falling quiet to the
ground, landing effortlessly next to the burned out gas can laying in
the dirt.
27
Roundup, Victims and the War on Drugs
07.03.02
As history shows, a narrow mind can be a dangerous weapon. This risk is
then increased exponentially if the dense individual is in any position
of power. Position of power: a situation where decisions made can--and
most often do--effect the lives or health of individuals and the
environment--or both.
The Global Justice Action Summit (www.globaljas.org), held in
Missoula, Montana June 20-24, is a traveling coalition of international
experts on economic justice, sustainable agriculture, environmental
protection and human rights, artists, poets, musicians and exhibitors
motivated to eliminate these destructive states of mind. More
accurately, the people involved in Global JAS are working towards
opening minds to create the awareness necessary for a more peaceful and
equitable future.
While spending time at the Global JAS I discovered our
governments involvement in an ongoing situation between a new and
improved version of 'America's number one weed and grass killer' and
the deterioration in heath of the indigenous people, plant, and
wildlife of southern Columbia.
In an ongoing effort to win the War on Drugs, the US has long
supported methods of aerial eradication of various plant life
throughout South America's Andes regions. More specifically, in 2000
"Plan Columbia" was designed to reduce the numbers of cocoa and poppy
plants of southern Colombia.
Now, for another brilliant, well though-out solution...(drum
role)...Glyphosate. Roundup. Lots and lots of 'America's no. 1 weed and
grass killer' being dumped out of low-flying, anti-aircraft-missile-
28
dodging crop dusters infecting not only the cocoa and poppy crop, but
the rest of the flora, trees, water sources, and human beings living in
these areas.
Who's the genius that thought up this one? According to their own
Web site, Monsanto, the makers of the herbicide, warn consumers that
Roundup is a "Non-selective weed killer: A herbicide that is formulated
to eliminate any green vegetation it comes in contact with."
The State department claims glyphosate is "harmless to humans."
But why then are the doctors in effected areas reporting a "drastic
increase in health complaints" and respiratory, skin and
gastrointestinal complications particularly in children (Colombia
Mobilization: CM, www.colombiamobilization.org).
Perhaps this is due to the fact that the persons making these
decisions forgot to consider the warning label on the bottle that reads
thusly: "Exposure to Glyphosate may produce irritation of the digestive
tract as demonstrated by signs and symptoms of mouth membrane
irritation, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea."
The chemical being sprayed over Colombia is washing into the
waters of the Amazon. An enhanced version of the household Roundup,
Roundup Ultra, contains a number of "untested additives called
surfactants" which are causing even more dire social, environmental and
public health side effects. The Amazon waterways now have a toxic
chemical flow downstream from Colombia threatening all aquatic life and
beneficial soil microbes that support all plant life.
Glyphosate is poisonous to the environment, to animals, and to
humans. And if you were to click on www.roundup.com/product_info
Monsanto will tell you about the effects Glyphosate has had in their
labs where they are currently conducting toxicology experiments on
mice, rats, rabbits and dogs.
29
The efforts of "Plan Colombia" have clearly been counter
effective. While there is a drug demand, there will always be a drug
supply. In case you were feeling that this campaign wasn't destructive
enough, for every acre sprayed, it is estimated that three acres of
rainforest are cut down by cocoa growers pushed into more remote areas.
The RAND conservative corporation in Washington reports that crop
eradication in other countries is the least effective way to slow drug
use in the United States. And that drug treatment in clinics and
hospitals is 23 times more cost effective.
A study done by the UN commissioned by Colombian government found
that the US funded aerial eradication efforts have not decreased cocoa
production in Colombia. In fact, in 1999-2000 cocoa production in South
America increased by 60% (CM).
Perhaps the poisoned children in Colombia would agree that
'America's no. 1 weed and grass killer' could very well be America's
no. 1 narrow-minded mistake.
30
The Eloquence of the Great Forgetting
Nomadic. Tribal. Pre-civilized man. Author Daniel Quinn would argue of
a more important era in human history than those that were—at one
point—most widely recognized by the anthropologists and cultural
academicians of Planet Earth. In one of his more popular titles, The
Story of B, Quinn spends 352 eloquently idiomatic pages examining his
cultural theory, flagging the human foul-up and attempting to awaken
his readers to ultimately transcend the aptly named Great Forgetting of
the time before agriculture began to rather stealthily take its
universal toll. The salt-in-the-wound cop-out, Quinn says, is in the
label this time period received once it's importance was recognized by
nineteenth century historians around the world. The cover-up got a
label: Pre-history.
"…(Our) agriculture emerged in the Near East… and we began to be we.
That was our cultural birthplace…a Great Forgetting that occurred in
our culture worldwide during the formative millennia of our
civilization…Neolithic farming communes turned into villages, villages
turned into towns, and towns were gathered into kingdoms…What was being
forgotten while all this was going on was the fact that there had been
a time when none of it was going on…a time when human life was
sustained by hunting and gathering rather than by animal husbandry and
agriculture…" (Quinn, The Story of B).
Regardless of the scientific arguments that surface over time, what is
most relevant here is the noted significance of a specific point (or
31
points) in human history, and what can be learned from them. What we're
left with now, and what is engrained in the Human History books of
nearly every classroom from kindergarten to the university is the
magnificent saving grace of what has come to be known as the
Agricultural Revolution.
Agricultural Revolution? The utterance alone is like a popular Top 40
hit, it just gets aired over and over to anyone sans the will to twist
the frequency dial and before you know it, no one remembers—or, worse
yet, has even heard of—the hundreds of years of folk music, African
tribal beats, and New Orleans jazz that serves as the essential
genealogical structure of what is filling up record stores by the
truckload. A trend, one might venture to say, is a powerful force. A
hoard of mindless bandwagoneers is culturally fatal.
Forward a few thousand years to 1701 when Jethro Tull, a scientific
farmer from Great Britain, invented the seed drill. Tull realized that
there were more efficient ways to get his seeds to take root than
scattering them on the ground. The seed drill made sowing seeds into
evenly spaced rows and at specific depths possible. The process lead to
a higher percentage of germinated seed, and increased crop yields…all
with much less effort. The Industrial Revolution was born.
In 1947 the first transistor was introduced. In the 1950s integration
of silicon chips with the transistor led to further developments in
communications and eventually to the chip-based computer. Intel Corp.
in 1971 developed a microprocessor with 2,300 transistors. In the 80s
we beheld the introduction of the first personal computers by Apple and
Microsoft. If you are old enough to be reading these sentences, and are
32
of the growing global sect that clicks-and-drags, searches, cell
phones, emails, googles, and downloads its way through its everyday,
you very well may have tapped into the unlimited potential, the wild
and unleashed assult of Information Technology, a somewhat totalitarian
reign of Digital Media on a good chunk of the world today. If that
cannot be classified as at least retaining the potential for a new
media revolution, I don't know what can.
We see these trends of society and realize our needs to be collectively
driven by something, to have something as an underlying element on
which we base our energies, our hours of work, our motivations, our
lives. What we seek is a knowledge that is derived from these
methodologies and processes that would be otherwise unattainable.
Hence, as I've said before (to many a confused and twisted brow):
technology is a natural step in the evolution of man, at least those
inhabiting the cultures that embrace and often pay homage to this
technology. It is the foundational educational programs like DMS and
other higher educational institutions involved in the iDMAa that strive
to merge this attained knowledge with a newly awakened sense of need
for creativity and insight in anticipation of the next great trend.
Maybe recognizing the waves of the past—Pre-history, Agriculture,
Industry, Information Technology, and now touching on Creativity and
Knowledge—allows us to foresee and progress to the next step in our
cultural evolution: Wisdom. Perhaps before this time comes though,
we'll need to experience a highly technologized remediation of Quinn's
nomadic tribes, a highly anticipated and much needed type of Great
Remembering.
33
Hot Springs Bantor
We went over to hot springs tonight where there is this old-ass cool
hotel built of adobe and antiques. apparently they have music and
performers from the Hot Springs Artist's Society every first friday and
saturday of the month. (Up until tonight i had been there primarily on
tuesday evenings for no particular reason other than to float in the
springs on one of their off-nights when the crowds arent as thick.)
tonight there was a two-person band: a somewhat younger woman vocalist
and a junior-high-science-teacher-aged man playing guitar. tonight they
were doing old jazz and showtunes from the 20s to 40s with about
seventeen or so people in the audience. the seating consisted of
approximately fourteen folding chairs and one thrift store love seat
set up in rows in the main and common quarters of the lobby. it was
genuinely beautiful. ticket sales were a sell-out. i guess, if you got
there first, you could have had the honor and priveledge of aquiring
the love seat in the front row, however there wasnt a high demand for
seating when we rolled out of our mineral bath wrinkley and wet.
besides, there were no waitresses anyway. so...the guy played an
antique ibanez but that isnt really relative to much in regards to this
story, but if you lived at 2138 tiffany, you might find that
interesting. anyways, regardless of the size of the production, the
singer and guitarist rocked. i imagine if you had lived through the
depression, ellis island, and the speak-easys, model-t, prohibition,
and the rest of the 20s, 30s and 40s, and made your way down into the
subterranean bars and cafes of the kerouac generation, and eventually
crept up on Sputnik with a full head in tact, and still you were
34
sitting in as part of the audience tonight, it would have surely been
an elaborate and nostalgiec stroll down memory lane.
It was a nice crowd for the most part aside from the two sipping
shitty beer ladies one row behind me and two seats to my right (solveig
was one seat to my left). they didnt say much for the first five songs
i sat in on, but they definitely got louder as the evening went on. i
gave them the quick-look courtesy glance twice as sort of a general
warning the first couple times their tipsy conversation rose above a
dining room hum. they kept on paying no attention. i went back to the
jazz but still the noise persisted into the next guitar solo. now they
had an older dude behind them sort of feeling like he was getting into
a party mood as well, holding on to the ever present miller light can.
i looked back again shortly. they didnt acknowledge. the music went on.
i looked up at those musicians and they too were now looking over at
the obnoxious folks talking and laughing away at whatever it was they
were doing, paying no mind to the show they themselves were sitting in
on. the guitarist smiled like he'd been there before.
"ok." i thought to myself. "this guy's surely played through this
shit before rightfully, but fuck if im going to sit here with sixteen
or so other people for the remainder of this good show and have some
moron saucebag and mindless bitch violate its sincerity for the rest of
us."
I looked up as the singer crinkled her brow and i didnt know if
it was part of her mindful vocals manifesting themselves in her facial
expressions or just the fact that these drunk fools were starting to
piss everyone off and she wasnt reserved from letting the facts show in
her face.
At this point i was done putting up with the idiocey mocking the
respect that these musicians deserved. i could take no more. as the
35
womens' rediculous laughter died down a bit mid song and their voices
in conversation picked up once again, i turned fully around, propped my
right forearm up on the chairback to my right, shifted my weight a bit
and blasted these morons with the most tasteful and shut-your-drunkass-up "SSHH" i have ever let out over all of my twenty-nine years. i
turned back around to the music. the drunk old man behind them who was
at one point trying to join them stopped talking himself and gave them
a "shh" of his own. (the entrails were in a giggle. i crossed my arms,
heart beating proud, and focused on the music.)
"I've been condemned!..." one of the old bags quivered in a
confused and drunken whisper. "...By a kid!...ssshhpaa...shpaa-"
Mentally, i went back to the jazz that i was there to see, my
heart was beating a bit because the entire group, now seventeen in the
audience, plus solveig, plus me, including the two musicians on stage,
had momentarily shifted their frustrations of a neussence and refocused
on the immediacey of their situation. but not to worry, now the drunk
middle-aged lady was trying to recover from her inailible decline,
trying to grasp at her puppet friend in a dire time of need, attempting
to make up in a truely shaken and confused state for the mindlessness
she's just admitted to a room full of complete strangers not one moment
before. and the fall-back, the old man behind her, was offering no
support in the least. in fact, the old man got up and left. the chipped
white squeeky jingle bell door slammed behind him. I, on the other
hand, settled in for the remainder of the show.
36
I knew Fahrenheit 9/11 would only piss me off. And it did.
I knew Fahrenheit 9/11 would only piss me off. And it did. By now I've
heard from other people most of the idiocies documented in the film
manifest by our child president over the past thirty months, but it is
something truly horrifying to see the stated leader of the free world
looking into a film camera, leaning in ultra close, like a sweaty,
hyped up NBA all-star or NFL wide receiver who's just caught a
touchdown hail-Mary, boasting how he has vowed to catch and kill and
"win the war on terror", pointing and panting into the lens as he goes.
Then, without skipping a beat or pausing for breath, the President of
the United States, for a split second seemingly aghast at his own
arrogance, finishes off his repetitive, catchphrase jingle with
"…Now…watch this drive." And as the camera pans out we see Bush on the
golf course. Again.
At this point it may seem almost trite to mention the scene so shocking
that Michael Moore chose it as the introduction frame to the DVD, but I
don't care. The very idea of a country's president choosing to continue
a PR photo shoot after he has been informed that the most populated
city in his country is under attack is nothing more than sickening.
Sure, the man looked stunned and confused, but then again, there was no
one there to tell him what to do, nor what to say, so he did nothing.
Absolutely nothing, but sit there flipping through a children's story
book.
This, along with the ensuing actions taken in Iraq and Afghanistan, the
constant "red" terrorist alerts, all the way up to the most recent
federal blunder and lack of emergency attention given to the soggy
37
folks in the south, confirms (for me at least) that George W. Bush and
his stony band of porky, old G.O.P.s are truly "in it" for the money—
huge Saudi oil and defense spending money—and simultaneously could not
care less about the people who call this country—their country—home.
On another not so unrelated note, I read in NEWSWEEK the other day that
the current presidential approval rating is somewhere around 38%, the
lowest in W's tenure. I was thinking about this number this morning
while watching his 20 minute speech given in front of the United
Nations in New York City. I wondered how George felt, addressing 160
presidents, prime ministers and kings gathered for three days of U.N.
General Assembly meetings, making straight-faced comments to a room
full of world leaders, many of whom urgently opposed the U.S. invasion
of Iraq back in March of 2003, now hoping for some acceptance among his
peers offering, "The U.N. and its member states must continue to stand
by the Iraqi people as they continue their journey." Jesus.
If you are supposed to be a leader, and only 38% of your people agree
you are doing the right thing, making the right decisions, you aren't
doing so well. I think Michael Moore is right in his deduction that
Bush has gone far over the edge and has made it obvious that he is in
it for the monstrous and long-term monetary gain (and power, which
equals money). George Bush's ethics and integrity are frail and
malnourished, and people have long since caught on, so much that the
current administration is fully aware and taking great steps to
compensate for their questionable leadership, mainly utilizing the
constant installation and reinstallation of fear in the minds of their
own people as a cornerstone to their methodology. It is an old tactic
to keeping the socio-political structure in tact, something the Bush
38
and the Bin Laden families both need to secure their financial wealth.
The risk now lies in the fact that the people of this world are fully
aware of the Bush administration's follies: their greed, disconcern,
and narrow-mindedness.
The man who is supposed to be in charge, brave, moral, and leading good
people out of harms way is now shaking up the global soda can,
heightening the dangerous upsurge of what Dr. Peter C. Whybrow
infamously coined "American mania"—the irate state of the Union—and
this political
pop top can only take so much before something blows.
39
Where Have All the Leaders Gone?
05.15.02
Nobody wants another Vietnam. I wasn't around before nineteen seventythree, but I've been to that brilliant black memorial in Washington and
witnessed the families crying against the marble wall. I walked along
with the aged veterans in their worn, green field coats holding each
other, clutching flowers in their hands. I saw guys sitting alone
staring silently from their wheelchairs in the sun.
The old man whose job it was to hand-out chalk sticks and paper
for visitors to do name rubbings never stopped moving. He carried a
little step stool up and down the sidewalk to make sure even the
grandchildren could reach. He didn't sit down to rest the entire time I
was there. I'm glad I was alone, if anyone expected even the slightest
bit of conversation from me I would not have known what to say. Until
then, I'd never witnessed so much brotherhood and pain in such a grand
and quiet place.
My father served as an officer on the USS Yorktown off the coast
of Vietnam. My mother sometimes mentions her high school friend in Ohio
who used to ride over on his motorcycle to visit at her family's house
on Meadowhill Lane. Like so many other kids at the time, he went off to
Vietnam one day and never came home.
The US's police action involvement in Vietnam is a confusing
issue at best with many sides of right and wrong. But, in my mind, at
least in the beginning, our government stood up for the human rights of
a people that were being directly and forcefully threatened by an
opposing and stronger force. Our military and governmental leaders
decided to take a stand and act on what they believed was right--on one
40
of the very ethics on which this country is founded: protecting weaker
and more vulnerable nations.
I would like to know then, why haven't our current leaders found
it within themselves to consistently uphold this same rule of ethics
today?
Fifty-three years ago China, under the military rule of Mao Tsetung, marched into Tibet and effortlessly slaughtered the Tibetan army
who fought back the only way they knew how--with rocks and weapons
dating back to the eighteenth century.
This invasion initiated China's reign of destruction and
political take-over of Tibet which has since then caused the deaths of
over 1.2 million (mostly unarmed) men, women, and children. Many of the
victims were ordained Buddhist monks and nuns. Over 6,200 monasteries
have been destroyed by Chinese soldiers since 1949--monasteries that
were filled with ancient books, artworks and religious artifacts dating
back thousands of years.
China claims the land--and people--of Tibet rightfully belong to
the Chinese government. In their incessant propaganda distributed
throughout the world, the forced Communist military take-over is
ironically referred to as the "Liberation" of the Tibetan people. For
the people of Tibet who have survived the past fifty years, it has been
ruled illegal and punishable by imprisonment to possess a photograph or
even speak the name of the Dalai Lama, the religious leader of Tibet.
Sure doesn't sound like much of a liberation to me.
In 1959 as a last resort the Dalai Lama, along with thousands of
other Tibetan citizens, secretly fled Lhasa to seek exile in India.
Today over 100,000 Tibetans have fled to India and other neighboring
countries in order to retain their personal and religious freedoms,
meanwhile the destruction continues in their homeland. Among thousands
41
of other imprisoned Tibetan people, the 11th Panchen Lama--a twelve
year old boy--and his family were kidnapped by the Chinese military on
May 17, 1995 and haven't been seen or heard from since. The Panchen
Lama is the youngest political prisoner in the world.
Seems to me it's high time somebody of power intervened. And I
say this is where Uncle Sam falls short.
Perhaps the US government needs more motivation to get involved
and stand up for the human rights of these people who have lived
peacefully in their own country bothering nobody for hundreds of years.
Get involved if you see fit, all it takes is one letter, fax or
email. Otherwise, you could do nothing and continue to be part of the
problem. Then, if a similar incident ever occured, we could all run off
to live in Toronto or Juarez while Red China builds restaurants
throughout Glacier National Park and tears down a few buildings they
don't need like, say, the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.
International Tibet Support Network: www.tibet.org. email:
itsn@tibet.ca. Congressman Max Baucus needs your letters too:
baucus.senate.gov. A couple clicks is all it will take.
Perhaps the agricultural products, the borax, uranium, iron, the
salted butter tea, or even the small amounts of gold available in Tibet
are of not enough value to our government to risk getting militarily
involved. Let's hope this isn't the case because that would mean there
runs the possibility that--contrary to what we would like to believe-the only reason we are in the Middle East at all is for the oil.
42
Leonard Treadway
Leonard Treadway had been a traveling salesman at Borris, Inc. for
exactly two years when his sales manager one day up and announced to
Leonard that a new batch of prospective clients had surfaced in
Rockford, Illinois. The new clients, he encouraged Leonard, were in the
market for exactly one-hundred thousand rubber stoppers, just like the
ones Borris, Inc. had been manufacturing for the past twelve years.
These people, Leonard's boss continued, were currently sending out for
bids to fill their client's needs, and needed to be hit as soon as
possible to secure some sort of a contract, any contract, but onehundred thousand rubber stoppers would be best.
Leonard grew excited at this news, as he always did when his boss
would announce fresh potential. After all, Leonard mused from time to
time, new clients meant new money, and for Leonard living alone in Swan
Heights, the lower-rent mobile home neighborhood of Cromwell, Montana,
a little extra money was always welcomed.
Leonard got especially anticipatory on this particular day
because, although he'd never even heard of Rockford, he knew Illinois
was quite a ways from where he now sat. The excitement came as Leonard
had never been on an airplane, save for the one time when he was three,
his parents told him, and they'd all flown together from Coeur D'Alene,
Idaho to San Francisco, California to visit his grandparents for Labor
Day.
Leonard didn't remember the family trip to California, although
in his old bedroom at his parents' house across town, there still hung
on the wall a faded orange and black Giants pennant that since
returning from the family trip all those years ago, he'd always
43
associated with an enormous and very loud and crowded place. As a
child, for years after his father hung the pennant, Leonard would
realize a very slight feeling of uneasiness every time he looked up at
it, , lying on his back in bed with his arms crossed behind his head
waiting for sleep to overwhelm him. His grandfather had taken Leonard
to Candlestick Park that year and even though Leonard was too small to
care at the time (and didn't go much for sports now as an adult) the
pennant still hung, the same three brass thumb tacks, in the exact spot
of his childhood bedroom walls.
Leonard's sales manager walked out of the room briefly to take a
phone call and left Leonard sitting there in the conference room
sipping tea from a poly-styrene cup.
Save for the squeaky cup on
table, there was absolutely no sound in the room.
"Sweet." Leonard thought to himself, "I'll probably get a meal
and a movie on the flight. I'll have to check a few bags, I guess. I'll
need to take a new suit with me. I'll make a grand impression on these
Rockford folks; they'll know I took a plane in to see them. Big,
important Leonard the sales man from Montana, flying in to meet the
people..." And on and on he daydreamed until his boss came back, his
button-down shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, shaking the Venetian
blinds with the slam of the conference room door behind him.
"So what do you think on this thing, Treadway?" Leonard's boss
growled, the ever-present sweat drip running down his temple.
"It sounds promising, Doug."
"I mean do you think you can pull these guys in, Leonard, that's
what I'm askin'."
"Well, Doug, I think so."
"You think so, Leonard? Or you know so?"
"Well, Doug, both."
44
"It's certainly good to see you so fired up about this one,
Treadway. This isn't your usual circumstance, we all know. Surely
you're the man for this job, though."
"Sure sounds like it, Doug. Two years isn't something to take
lightly. Everyone around here knows that."
"Sure, Treadway."
"Sure, Doug."
"OK, then Treadway. Go see accounting for gas vouchers, hotel
vouchers, all that you'll need, man, that's one hell of a drive. God
damn, no offense, Treadway, but I'm sure glad it's not me doing it."
"Drive? What do you mean drive, Doug?"
"Hell, Treadway, this company's nearly gone under seventeen times
in its twelve year history, every one of those near misses has been
fundamentally financial. You didn't think we could afford to fly you to
all the way to the East Coast and back did you?"
The next several minutes passed. Leonard got hot in the face and
felt sweat building up on his back under his shirt, and in his arm
pits. His heart started to pound and his head was spinning in
confusion.
"Ah, Doug?" Leonard's boss was holding the door to the conference
room open for Leonard's exit, very obviously finished with his lame
attempt at boosting Leonard's company moral.
"What is it, Treadway?"
"How far is Rockford from Cromwell exactly?"
"Far? Hell, Treadway, what do I look like a God damn walking
thesaurus? You're in control of this one, Treadway. Now, just go on out
there and get 'em, Soldier, and bring these guys back home."
45
Leonard realized he hadn't been called a name like that for many
years since he was a child. And the combination of his boss blindly
tossing him into this cross-country trek, and calling him Soldier at
the same time gave Leonard a sick and nervous feeling in his stomach
and he wished he'd never agreed to go.
So by Friday Leonard had an envelope of motel and gasoline
vouchers like the ones Borris, Inc. had been supplying him with for the
past five years. They were good for all of the seedy cockroach motels
and major petroleum stops along most of the highways throughout the
Northwest United States. No one in Leonard's company had every ventured
out farther than that.
"If you run out of vouchers," the accounting clerk told him, "or
if you get somewhere where the vouchers aren't valid, you'll have to
pay out of your own pocket. We can reimburse you when you get back."
"Alright." was all Leonard could respond with. His mind was still
racing; he was still confused at how far he actually needed to go to
get to this place called Rockford. He was still shaken at the idea of
his boss just sort-of tossing him into this crazy scenario, when he
himself had no details about any of it, other than the rumor that there
were some needy rubber stopper suppliers somewhere out there, clear
across the country, unfathomably far from Borris, Inc. headquarters in
Cromwell, Montana. It was the mindless assignment on his boss's part
that bothered Leonard the most. Every time he thought about it, Leonard
grew nervous and his hands started to sweat. The ink on the vouchers
began to bleed into his palms so he shoved them into his front pockets
and pushed open the door, squinting into the late afternoon sun. The
parking lot was nearly empty, uncharacteristically quiet and subdued.
With his hands still in his pockets Leonard glanced from side to side,
46
checking for oncoming cars, a slight breeze blew his hair down into his
face and the heavy glass door behind him clicked shut.
Leonard spent his weekend readying himself for what he believed
would become an epic journey to the Midwestern United States. He called
his parents across town and told them his intended route of travel in
case, he said, something went terribly wrong, they'd know where to come
find him.
"Oh, don't be so worried," Leonard's father told him. "You'll do
just fine, it's great you'll get out and see some of the country-side.
What are you so worried about, son, what could possibly go wrong?"
The conversation with his parents didn't last long because when
his father asked him point-blank what he was really worried about,
Leonard had no answer. He really didn't know.
"Take some of these apples from the fridge," his Mother said
twice to him over the phone, "they'll keep you awake." Leonard agreed
to take the fruit, but his mind kept reverting back to his father's
question.
Later Leonard sat at the kitchen table of his rented mobile home
in Swan Heights vaguely listening to Friday Night Videos blinking and
banging in the next room, the television set sending out the lonely
blue glow from around the wall divider separating the tiny kitchen that
his mother always called "cozy" from the rest of the house. Hunched
over, Leonard studied the American political atlas that he'd borrowed
from the Cromwell Public Library on his way home from work earlier that
night. He learned very quickly that if he stayed on Interstate 90 the
whole way he'd need to enter, cut across, or pass through completely
47
six states in order to make it into Illinois, sixteen-hundred and ten
miles to the east of where he now sat.
As he followed the thin, crooked blue line with his finger across
the map, reading off the endless list of mileage markers, exit points,
secondary roads and small towns along the way, the tense feelings of
sickness and nervousness began to dissipate inside of him. A moth
flickering around the ceiling lamp sent a giant fleeting shadow
bouncing across the map of a country Leonard had no idea was anywhere
near this immense. A new feeling arose in his gut, one he hadn't felt
maybe since he was picked to represent his high school, the Cromwell
Redbirds, at the Montana State spelling contest nearly twelve years
ago. This—Leonard thought, as his finger slid eastward into Minnesota—
is going to be nothing short of the single greatest adventure I've ever
had. This, Leonard thought, is going to be wild.
He thought for a second then about the office and how he'd felt
leaving there that afternoon. He thought about the stuffy hallways and
fluorescent lights bolted into the foam ceilings. He thought about
Doug, his boss, all wired up and fierce, everyday sweating in the same
curious manner, unbelievably stressed, Leonard noticed countless times
from his desk at the south entrance of the office building, about the
fabrication and moldings of millions of black rubber stoppers.
Leonard began to wish he had a small pick-up truck that he could
put a camper on the back of, like John Steinbeck. I could get to one of
these run-down old motels, he mused, and cash in all these room
vouchers. I could keep the money and camp out, like real travelers do,
he said to himself. He dug up Travels with Charley and read a couple
pages when the author was crossing the Missouri River. That guy was
dependent on no one—Leonard said to himself, pouring more sweetened
green tea with milk and shooing away a moth from in front of his face—
48
way out there on his own, camping out, sleeping under the stars,
talking to strangers all along the way, the way real travelers do.
Leonard decided just then that although he didn't have a camper
like Steinbeck, he'd rattle along Highway 90 headed east in his 1994
Buick station wagon and sleep across the back seats with the windows
rolled down, under the stars, like real travelers do.
Monday morning came and Leonard was packed and ready to go. He
let the engine idle in his driveway as he flipped up and down on the
radio dial looking for some music to ease the butterflies in his
stomach. He didn't know exactly what there was to be nervous about,
other than the fact that he, just like most people he knew in Cromwell
including his family and most of his friends and associates, had never
been further out than the county line. They'd all ridden the old steam
train that carried tourists and visiting relatives up the steep
mountain passes around this corner of the state, but, Leonard thought,
vibrating there in his maroon corduroy drivers seat, that train ride
doesn't really count. Nobody ever had to drive. Nobody was ever really
on their own. The locomotive only ever went up and back some sixty
miles, and the passengers never had to get up from their twelve-dollar
seats.
No, Leonard said to himself in a shaky voice, that trains not
real traveling. A plane ride to San Francisco is not real traveling.
Steinbeck, that's real traveling, and man, good Lord, I'm with him.
Leonard backed up the Buick, shifted into overdrive, and turned
the wheel south, out of town, down MT Highway 73.
49
Like a Sociological Phoenix Rising out of the Drone and Piss-Soaked
Heartache of a Once-Genuine Fallen Angel
25 July 2005
Reflections on a weekend in the Minnesota Woods
I went to what is called the 10.000 lakes festival in Detroit Lakes,
Minnesota this weekend with a few of my friends. We drove up in their
alabaster 1978 Volkswagen camper. The van was fun. The friends are
genuine. The destination was a disaster.
I've been to many summer music festivals, so I thought this one, like
many of the others, would at the very least, be relaxing, optimally, it
would have been interesting. In a perfect world, I would have met some
new, solid associates. As we are all well aware, however, we are living
in a far from perfect world.
Many of the bands reigning high on the twirling jam band-wagon
hierarchy were on the bill (which I had full access to before even
packing my bag to leave), so I take full responsibility for myself
having suffered through the maddening three day run. But, to sum up the
setting, as I so often enjoy doing: The place was truly ridiculous. I
hated the entire thing.
I felt trapped because I didn't have my truck to get the hell away from
all the druggies and their drugs, the drunk alcoholics, the sinewy
sluts snorting cocaine, and the shirtless college morons actually doing
"beer bongs", cargoes of Coors Light stacked high above the sidewalls
of their red Chevy pick-ups. Whoever was not up---running around in
filthy bare feet, inducing as many controlled substances as they
possibly could, just short of required emergency room attention---was
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passed out in the heat and humidity, a half empty bottle of liquor
within arms reach. To be clear, I don't mean to categorize every
individual there with such a sweeping, demurring limn, however, I am
not writing this story, I am writing down this story.
I read over 400 pages of a contrastingly, intelligently written Dan
Brown novel to take up most of my time. The other hours were filled
with sweaty, unsettling sleep, punctuated by hourly disturbances of
intoxicated concert-goers screaming their heads off for no reason, or
lighting M-80s off wherever their numb minds told them was necessary.
We saw one gasoline fire in the wooded campground, gangs of unshowered,
speed-riddled twenty-something's selling drugs, and more drugs. One of
these jackasses even offered me heroine on Saturday afternoon. There
were only two things in the world I wanted to do at that point: One,
leave. And, two, punch that guy in the throat. Hard. I felt sickened
and repulsed. I was embarrassed to be associated with this crowd.
Although I had made up my mind a day earlier that I was there only to
observe, not participate, I still needed out. When we left a day early,
I couldn't have been happier. I was a sociological phoenix rising out
of the drone and piss-soaked heartache of a once-genuine fallen angel.
When I got home, I turned up the air conditioning. I took a very long,
hot shower. Shaved my face. Washed my hair with shampoo and
conditioner, and then combed it back, out of my face. I put on clean
clothes, and laid on the floor of the family room watching anything
interesting I could find, cursing myself for being foolish enough to go
to the festival in the first place, but, simultaneously satisfied in
knowing I was finally wise enough to never go back.
51
Oh, those Denver Friday night frick-a-freck rock a day poems
30 September 2005
Tonight I drank with the ex-editor of the L.A. FreePress, the
underground paper from the late 1960s which featured a rambling,
drunken column from Charles Bukowski. Gene Youngblood is his name. He's
a world-known media philosopher and grand advocate for the Media
Democracy Movement since before anyone knew what the Media Democracy
Movement was. They didn't know what it was because it didn't exist,
aside from being an ideological method to something more honest than
CNN, NBC, or Comcast. (I don't know that Comcast even was alive in any
incarnation back then, but boycott them anyway.)
For real, though, the guy, Youngblood, gave a lecture for the Digital
Media Studies department's visiting scholar program tonight on campus.
He fumbled a bit with the AV setup as most people tend to do, but then
said some magnificent things about DemocracyNow.org, Free Speech
Television, etc. (full list to come at www.radio-qmx.org), and then the
momentum turned to the Breakdown Collective, a book depository in my
famed Capital Hill neighborhood where the beer and wine flowed like
beer and wine, the veggie hors devours and crackers no one ate, but
professors and guests ranted on about cross-continental treks, and
speaking Spanish, and taking the only pharmaceutical drugs that'll
render a solid Yankee parasite-free after two months studying abroad in
Brazil.
52
So, Gene comes over to snack on a grape after I'd had a few, asks me my
name. I fill him in and off to the races we go.
Me: DMS; Him: Santa Fe College; Him: Art Institute of Chicago; Me: Art
Institute of Chicago; Me: Northwestern Ph.D.; Him: LA FreePress; Me:
Media Psychology; Me: "You ever meet Bukowski?"; Him: "Oh yeah." and
first hand accounts of the mad loon handing in his work, hitting on the
secretary, and on and on.
Best Goddamn guy I ever met on a Thursday night in Denver. I told him
about "GreenDoorHouse" and the cabin in the woods and the NEA and why
Chicago is the best city and about Bernie Luskin in Santa Barbara and
the books of poems and teaching a new kind of creative media class and
the potential of "me and some of my buddies" being a production crew
for his publication of articles from the Bukowski Days, and "the editor
down in Tennessee...met him on the road," I told him, "at a String
Cheese Incident show somewhere up in the hot July mountains northwest
of Salida, Colorado a few years ago...edited our way into a NEA /
Montana Arts Council grant to fund the whole operation..." etc.
"Montana." He says. "Why'd you go up there?"
I told him.
"Montana." He says. "I gotta get up there."
Oh, one of those nights that should never end. And make chapters worth
of frick-a-freck rock a day poems. Here it comes, I say, stay tuned.
"Control the context..." Gene said, in a pointing-finger, straw hat,
black shirt, black suspenders, experienced and sagastic kind of way
from up at the bar stool lecturn. "Control the context, and you control
the reality."
53
Sometimes the President Just Wants to Look Good
05.01.02
Chances are most of you have never even heard of our Roadless Area
Conservation Rule. Chances are the White House would like to keep it
that way. The rule -- which was set into motion by the US Forest
Service back in January 2000 -- 'protects the last remaining wild
National Forest lands from road construction and most logging, except
when needed to restore ecological integrity, protect habitat for
endangered species, or reduce threats of catastrophic wildfire,'
according to the Heritage Forests Campaign.
With well over half of the United State's National Forest land
presently unprotected from logging, mining, and drilling, the rule set
aside 58.5 million acres, or 30% of the total USFS land, for
recreation, rare wildlife, clean air and drinking water, and scientific
research. I think that's fair.
In an admirably eco-conservative and astonishingly conscious move
our beloved George W. Bush & Co. made several promises to do its part
in upholding the rule. To many people I know this promise came as quite
a shock from such a distinctly big-business-bigger-oil-supporting
office. We even got an Earth Day Pledge on April 22, 2001: up on the
shiny podium, smiling in front of the crowd, crimson, white and indigo
blowing in the breeze behind him. Here's some of what our forestfriendly President said: "Our prosperity as a nation will mean little,
if our legacy to future generations is a world of polluted air, toxic
waste, and vanished forests."
And I agree. But, I learned early on, like most things in life if
it seems too good to be true than most likely it is.
54
The rule was slated to take effect on March 13, 2001, but when
Bush was elected his office immediately postponed its adoption and is
now taking steps to allow the dismantling of the rule it claims to
support. In fact, the administration, in its corporate interests, just
finished up another comment period which will further delay
implementation of the rule.
Boise Cascade Corp. who happens to be one of the heavy hitters in
the National Forest timber market is already into at least one lawsuit
challenging the rule. The Mountain States Legal Foundation, a property
rights group, is suing. Perhaps their clients are in need of more land
for another housing subdivision. Maybe more shopping malls -- who
knows. But they want it. And I'm just going to assume they don't plan
to protect it as a wildlife or recreation sanctuary.
In addition, the Justice Department and Attorney General John
Ashcroft have the power in settlement of any of these lawsuits to
render the rule obsolete time after time by continuing to bury it in
the 'legal limbo of indefinite review and impact studies', according to
the Heritage Forest Campaign. All the while subjecting it to big
business interests around the world.
At least for now the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is safe from
the proposed drilling. But excavation interests now only shift. Other
areas under the threat of commercial endeavors are the National Forests
covering the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, parts of Montana, and
the Tongass national forest, the nation's largest old-growth forest,
just to name a few.
Get involved if you feel the need. For starters contact Heritage
Forests Campaign www.ourforests.org. You will find yourself as part of
the solution. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, "Never
before have the American people so actively participated in helping to
55
decide how their public lands should be managed." This is a good sign.
Get involved.
56
Remembering Smokey
07.24.02
Way back in March of this year, when there was still plenty of snow on
the ground, we didn't have to worry much about starting forest fires.
However, that was March, this is July.
My brother and some of his friends from other cities flew up to
the Flathead Valley, mainly to ski and snowboard for several days. If
you have a nice size fire pit in your yard like we do, even after the
sun sets in Montana--and maybe after a couple beers--it's comfortable
to sit out on the old beat-up lawn chairs or on those hacked up tree
stumps in the snow. On those nights, as it got later and we all
eventually filed off to bed one by one, I would continually shovel
piles of snow to extinguish the flames and keep them from resurrecting
throughout the night.
One of those mornings I woke up, climbed down out of the loft,
and was surprised to see "Dan-from-Chicago" sitting out with a pintsized early morning fire waiting for everyone else to arise--which took
a while. But, by mid-morning we had the truck packed up with all the
boards and boots and were on our way to Big Mountain. It was cloudy up
there...again.
I knew Dan had more than enough sense to put the fire out before
we left, using the same winter-time, overly-convenient mini-serac
method I'd been using all along (which seemed fairly fool-proof until
now). I even checked to make sure, and, to the best of my judgment, the
one-man campfire had successfully been suffocated and drown.
When we got back to the cabin later that afternoon, however, I
realized our mistake. The coals underneath the logs stayed hot enough-even with almost no oxygen--to melt the foot of white powder piled on
57
top. The coals continued to dry out the logs that were now soaked with
snow melt, and heat the logs back up--hot enough to restart the fire we
had extinguished 8 or 10 hours prior. As we pulled up the driveway I
saw smoke from behind the house...the blaze had rekindled itself.
So, we made a mistake and learned from it. That's how that
usually works. Luckily nothing ever got out of control. To me it's
quite baffling then, to see (as I drive around Bigfork these days)
people flicking cigarette butts out of their car windows. This isn't
LA, folks. Montana isn't one giant paved lot.
According to the National Interagency Fire Center based in Boise,
Idaho, 90% of all wild fires in the United States are caused by
careless humans. Apparently lots of you have never heard of Smokey the
Bear.
I grew up in Chicago, I've seen a lot of lit, airborne cigarettes
mindlessly tossed aside and out of windows. However, the temperature
here hasn't dropped below 92 during the day for quite some time. And
the rains and moisture we were getting a few weeks ago have long dried
up.
I think there are more travelers along highway 35 these days than
there are motoring through Santa Fe in the height of their summer
season...until now I thought that number couldn't be topped. It seems a
good percentage of this Bigfork traffic are seasonal residents (which
would make the littering and fire hazard that much more ridiculous and
sad).
But, many of these people are tourists. Campers. People who spend
time in the woods. The same woods that I just mentioned are very, very
dry. Try then, Americans--and visiting Canadians--not to litter your
cigarette butts. The pollution is bad enough, but when it holds the
58
potential for destroying thousands of acres of wild lands, wildlife and
homes...NEWSFLASH...It's a bad habit to fall into.
59
Ten Years After
05.08.02
Today is the ten-year anniversary of the south central Los Angeles
riots that, over the course of five days and nights, left 50 people
dead and the city with over a billion dollars in damage. The riots
began as a fueled and misguided reaction to the now-infamous Rodney
King beating. At the time, the chief of the LAPD claimed King was "a
fugitive, speeding down the highway at 95 mph, and didn't pull over for
the police... they beat him more than they should have."
I don't have any more of the police chiefs statement on hand, nor
do I care enough to do any research on the ensuing trial. What's done
is done, that was 1992. Those four cops were acquitted and Los Angeles
went crazy. No certainties will ever come of the situation, and I think
we've all had enough of the pop stars Mr. King and those LAPD officers
turned into as a result of what went down that night in California. The
reason I bring this up in the first place is because this was the
headlining story on CNN this morning, and something that seemed
somewhat relative to a few thoughts I was mulling over as I picked up
the remote and sat down.
As I lay in bed late last night I couldn't get some things out of
my head. They're all sort of sad examples of what our society has, for
whatever reasons or tolerances, come to accept. The trip in the whole
thing is that the majority of us have reached this point of tolerance
even though we know it's wrong: inherently wrong. We don't need some
Bible thumper or even responsible parents to explain these things, just
common sense. And my conclusion reaches just that fact: most people
show zero evidence of using even a shred of common sense.
60
First off, for two hundred years mankind has witnessed and played
part in one of the greatest and most noble struggles in human history:
Civil Rights. As we are all well aware, a major foundation to this
struggle is the idea that for years people of predominantly lightcolored skin bought and sold Africans and African-Americans as slaves.
It doesn't take a neurosurgeon to deduce that people just don't have
the right to buy and sell other people. And for me, the strongest
association of this twisted concept is one word: "nigger". It's always
been an extremely ugly, hate-filled word that for some time in America
was used only by the obscenely ignorant white folk who took part in the
buying and selling of their fellow man. Things change. Maybe someone at
MTV can tell me when this phrase went from being one of the most
derogatory and demeaning expressions in the English language to a
ridiculous and hip colloquialism, seemingly more widely used and
accepted than the term 'African American.' Apparently, not all of our
emerging subcultures found their traditions on rational thought.
Secondly, the other day, a friend of mine in Chicago was relating
to me a story of a grown woman with whom he shares office space, who
assumes the responsibility of a professional managerial position at a
large and prosperous corporation. My friend witnessed this woman
outwardly making fun of another woman's photograph because, according
to woman-number-one, woman-number-two was "fat". This practice is
without a doubt very widely recognized in our country, however most
individuals tend to get it out of their systems sometime before the age
of ten. Seems woman-number-one needs to get a hobby. Preferably one
which continually reminds her that compassion towards others plays an
important role in one's own happiness. It's important she should start
to learn this now since she was obviously out sick the day this lesson
was covered in her elementary school.
61
And lastly, in the East (that is, the Far East, not New York
City), in the different Native American cultures, in almost all African
and native Australian belief systems (which pretty much covers nearly
everyone on Earth except North Americans and Europeans) the elderly
members of society are regarded as just short of holy. In most cases
this belief is founded on the respect of their sagacity, longevity, and
learned wisdom. To me, this makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, for the
average American, sometime between the hula-hoop and Woodstock it
became uncool to appreciate the old. And I'm not speaking of the
worthless, grumpy folks who voluntarily spend their days in a deepening
sulk. I speak of the intelligent and the mindful people in our society
who have lived through wars, and the depression, prohibition, and
natural disaster. The wise who have seen things happen and are smarter
than the rest of us because of their experiences in life. These are the
ones we should learn from. These are the ones we should look up to.
But, these are just a few of the thoughts that surfaced in my
mind starting at 5:30 this morning as I rolled around in the cabin
loft. And then again when I flipped on CNN and was reminded of the
chaos and over fifty deaths that happened ten years ago today in Los
Angeles. Now, what I wonder, is through all this, has anyone learned
anything? Have we made any progress?
The Tony Danza Show and Me 20 February 2006
Though I was convinced long ago that there was no bigger waste of time
in this world than sitting in traffic on I-90 in Chicago, or I-25 in
Denver, or "the 5", I think it's called, in San Diego or Los Angeles, I
believe, today, I found one bigger. It is cold outside here along the
Front Range of the Colorado Rockies. Record cold, that is. It was 2.5
degrees F outside the other night as I glanced over at the weather
station I was given as a Christmas present this year. I like the
62
weather station a lot. I don't, however, like when it reads out 2.5
degrees F loud and clear. But it did the other night, and it wasn't
much better this morning. I am telling you this because I usually go
running outside nearly everyday for my physical, and mental, health.
When I was living in the cabin in the Montana woods, I was forced to
run inside at the local health center during the later weeks of January
and into February. In Montana, sometimes, if you have one, the weather
station next to your bed will read less than 2.5 degrees F. This makes
for difficult breathing only going out to get the mail, let alone
running across the hard pack for five miles at a stretch. So, inside I
went. And inside I've gone lately here in Denver to exercise.
So, the boring part: The bed that I sleep in every night is getting
old. It sags toward the middle. This has nothing to do with a weather
station, but it does give me a soar back. The muscles along the bottom
of my spine got so irritated a few weeks ago, on our way back from a
4,000 mile road trip, that I had to swing by the Lincoln, Nebraska
Emergency room at midnight. The muscles were swollen and gross and I
thought I was turning into something. But, I wasn't. I just had a bad
back and needed to rest the muscles. So, now I ride the stationary
bicycle for twenty minutes inside during the winter in Colorado; one,
to warm up the muscles; and, two, to save myself from getting pneumonia
when the weather station reads such a low number.
I ride the stationary bike for twenty minutes and then I get on the
elliptical machine for, sometimes, thirty. This can add up to a
strenuous workout. When I am on the bike, I can read to pass the time.
I usually bring whatever book I am reading at the time, but today I
forgot the book. I sat down on the bike and realized I had nothing to
read. I went over to the magazine rack and flipped through the sagging,
ripped, multi-tiered selection hanging on the wall: Cosmo, Track and
63
Field, Teen (at a university?), etc. No Newsweek, no Wired, not even an
issue of Transworld. I picked up the next best thing, I thought, and
therein was my mistake. I apologize to anyone in advance who works for,
likes, reads, or, heaven forbid, subscribes to Electronic House
magazine. I know a lot of people like television. A lot of people
devote a lot of their lives to keeping current with the NBC, Fox, and
Reality Television line-ups. I have never been one of those people. I
don't like watching sports on TV, I don't like watching the news on TV,
I don't like watching Martha, or Oprah, or Desperate House Wives, or
24, or That 70s Show, or even Extreme Makovers. I was completely blown
away the other week when I was flipping through the stations, out of
boredom, and came across what can only be described as The Tony Danza
Show. Sweet Jesus. (I should admit here I love the show ER. If ER is on
in the morning, I'll be late to work in order to finish off the
episode. And The Girls Next Door was amusing for about three episodes.
But, now its much more interesting to have Hugh and the three women
grace the stages of CNN and not back down to Larry King while he tries
to be on The People's side and convince them that they are doing
something wrong.) But, then there is Electronic House magazine. It's a
full color periodical dedicated to creating the years most expensive
and extravagant ways to watch television. Special chairs, special
blueprints of rooms, multi-thousand dollar flat screens on walls,
bigger, better hardware, suggestions, advertisements selling more ways
to set up your TV, and more ways to buy newer TVs. I can't even stand,
sometimes, to have the television on at home. Good thing we all can
fill our gym time now with a magazine on how to watch more.
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Two-Bedroom Apartment
Densmore knew white trash when he saw it. He'd spent quite a bit of
time around people like this—especially in the western regions of the
United States—in the campgrounds and motels that lined nearly all of
the highways and secondary roads from his home in Baltimore, Maryland
to the Pacific coast, 2705 miles west. Densmore hadn't seen his sister
since he left Baltimore for L.A. nearly two years ago. Shortly after he
moved away, his sister left home as well, with a girlfriend of hers
from high school.
The girls said they too were headed for sunny California, for
adventure and fresh new starts of their own. However, they never made
it past St. Louis. The girl, Densmore's sister's friend, had an uncle
who owned an apartment complex in Glenwood, a neighborhood near the
city limits, and told the two girls they could stay in one of the twobedroom units for next to nothing as long as they did some work around
the building once in a while. So for the next ten months, Densmore's
sister and her friend mingled around in the St. Louis night life, and
during the day rolled green and white rubber garden hoses on the
cracked concrete parking lots, watered potted plants, mowed what little
lawn the complex sat surrounded by, repainted yellow parking strips on
the blacktop, and vacuumed the hallways and around the bank of
mailboxes sunk into the imitation faux marble walls, twice a week, and
dusted the lobby coffee tables no one had sat next to in years.
At the end of ten months Densmore's sister had a somewhat regular
boyfriend. His name was Raymond. Raymond would come around the
apartment complex usually two or three times a week. Always bouncing
into the parking lot from southbound traffic on Lisle Avenue in his
1985 Chevy Cavalier, smoking a cigarette, listening loudly to whatever
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KDRK's Top 40 was sending out. The rest of the week Densmore's sister
would hear from Raymond over the phone maybe, but he never really
could—or would—account for his whereabouts on the days and times of his
absence.
So, Densmore's sister usually just wondered about things—things
like if Raymond was really being faithful to her as he protested he
was, and if so, where was he? Why doesn't he come around more often? He
didn't work but once a week at his father's garage rotating good tires
and patching leaks in bald ones. She'd met some of Raymond's friends
once, but didn't know much about them. Densmore's sister went through
her days then, sometimes feeling happy, but sometimes not. The thought
to move on never crossed her mind. She just sort of accepted things as
they were and let them be.
Besides, she thought, we're not married, I'm an independent
twenty-seven year old woman, I can see other men if I want. But she
never did. In fact, upon Raymond's request, she stopped going out with
friends to the clubs and bars of the city all together.
Around this same time, her friend from Baltimore, who she'd moved
into the two-bedroom apartment with, started running around with some
people Densmore's sister didn't really care for and consequently wasn't
home much anymore. Densmore's sister didn't mind though, she thought
her friend's new friends were somewhat trashy and below her own
standards. She didn't like that all they seemed to do was smoke
cigarettes, watch television all day and drink. They drove badly
damaged cars or rode the greasy buses. They didn't have real jobs that
Densmore's sister knew of. She was happy, at least, they didn't hang
out around her apartment, even though, she sensed from time to time,
the large two-bedroom could get a little bit too quiet, especially in
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the evenings when she didn't have to work and the three television
channels she got weren't airing anything she cared to see.
Densmore's sister got a second job waiting tables at a diner at
the far end of Newbird Street, eleven blocks from the apartment complex
where she lived. She started smoking cigarettes too. Her friend—who she
didn't see much anymore—said one day she hated St. Louis and moved out
two weeks later, talking a lot about Miami. She took some clothes, a
chair and her electric hair dryer and drove off in an old sedan
Densmore's sister had never seen before. Densmore's sister watched from
their apartment window as the red brakelights flashed on for a split
second and the depressed old car paused briefly before darting out into
the rainy evening traffic on Lisle Avenue. Densmore's sister received
only an occasional, and fleeting, postcard from around southern Florida
after that.
L.A. hadn't worked out for Densmore. After nearly two years on the
coast, he was headed home, back to Baltimore, and, quite frankly, he
couldn't wait to get there. His family was there—minus his sister in
St. Louis; his old friends were there, though some of them would have
changed quite a bit; he imagined his dog, Lucia, would be sleeping on
the porch as always, or growling at squirrels in the steep and wooded
back yard. Lucia must be twelve years old by now.
L.A. was fun for Densmore, but not much else. He'd met a girl he
liked, but she turned out to be a lesbian. This would not have been
such a big deal to Densmore, he simply would have accepted the idea
that she was gay, and further considered the girl a friend.
But she
never was honest with him, she led him on, in fact, in a somewhat
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confused and unclear state, as if she were considering going
heterosexual. Densmore eventually, months after their first encounter,
resorted hesitantly to peeking around trendy coffee shop corners and
hanging out many nights in the dark end of a long bar, watching the
girl carry on and sometimes even make out with other girls. The whole
situation left Densmore sick in his stomach, not really heart broken,
more just pissed at the growing number of people, he thought, who
aren't honest in the world.
"The list of cool people," Densmore's friends would say to him,
"continues to shrink."
He had a job for a while during his sojourn in Los Angeles at a
movie rental outlet. The few friends Densmore had all were selfproclaimed aspiring actors and Densmore joked as they all sat around in
a non-smoking bar some nights that he too was a professional in the
movie and multi-trillion dollar entertainment industry, but, simply, of
a different division.
The money he made as a clerk at the movie store was barely enough
to pay his share of a three bedroom bungalow that sat within sight of
the crooked and capitalized Hollywood sign. He rarely had enough money
to go out, he ate less than he had in Baltimore, he wondered how to
meet a girl without having money to take her out on their first date.
He spent most of his free time at the beach looking around the little
shops and sitting in the fine, warm sand. This, at least, gave him
comfort and a little peace. Sitting there in the sand, he kept telling
himself he was going to learn to surf, save up some of each paycheck,
and buy his own board—but he never did.
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So, that's pretty much how L.A. went for Densmore. And now, sitting in
his sister's St. Louis apartment on Lisle Avenue, a stop-off visit on
his way back to Baltimore, he began to see things about his sister that
he never had before.
After six more months of Raymond running around mysteriously and
showing up randomly to her apartment week after week, Densmore's sister
somewhat blankly and rather numbly accepted his ridiculous wedding
proposal one Friday night in May. She knew something special either had
or was about to happen when he barged through the thin front door of
her two-bedroom apartment with a six pack of bottles this time, not
cans. Raymond always said the cost difference between a six pack of
cans and a six pack of bottles was at least one pack of smokes, and he
added, when you're drunk they all taste the same anyhow. To comments
like these Densmore's sister usually just shrugged, and looked away,
bored.
On the night of the big question, though, according to Densmore's
sister, Raymond had stumbled in the door, drunk and nervous, got down
on one knee on the kitchen linoleum, and pulled a ring from his jean
jacket pocket. Densmore's sister was floored. She felt swept away by
love, and stared, amazed at her knight, shaking like a leaf, smelling
of a brewery.
'The ring,' she later admitted, 'is cheap and not really my
style. It looks as if he got it at Carmine's,' she said, rolling her
eyes. But with Raymond on his knee in the old kitchen of her twobedroom apartment, Densmore's sister didn't know what to say, so she
said yes.
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Densmore didn't think much of his new brother-in-law, sitting there on
a Formica chair in the same dank little kitchen where he had proposed
to Densmore's sister. Up until the time of the wedding, he always
imagined his sister being married in a grand old church, she in a long,
white beautiful dress, a handsome and well-maintained groom in a black
tuxedo. Densmore thought he could see himself maybe as the best man, in
a matching black tuxedo of his own. He'd never worn a tuxedo. He
wondered how he might have felt, standing there at the top of the
narrow isle, watching his beautiful sister approaching, one step at a
time, under the towering arched vaults and booming antique pipe-organ
psalms. He wondered just to what extent the disappointment was that his
parents were feeling as a result of his sister and Raymond taking their
vows, alone for the most part, in the eight p.m. time slot in the Hall
of Justice in Glenwood, Missouri the Saturday night following the
proposal in May.
They didn't even get professional pictures taken, or wait for
their families to fly in, his mother said over a crackling phone line
from Baltimore to L.A two days after the ceremony. His parents were
upset and Densmore understood. Raymond, they said, doesn't even have a
job.
Densmore assured and tried to console his mother by promising he
would make a stop in St. Louis to see his newly wed sister, and, in a
general way, check things out. He'd bring back a report of sorts upon
his arrival in Baltimore.
On his first night in his sister's and sister's new husband's
two-bedroom apartment he sat playing with two small children, a boy of
about five and a girl of about three. The childrens' parents were
neighbors of some sort and seemed to come around often by the way they
brought beer and cigarettes, and walked around Densmore's sister's
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apartment as if they lived there too. This situation, it seemed to
Densmore, appeared to be quite routine.
There was a screen door in the kitchen that opened out to a rundown, weedy courtyard that many of the apartments sat adjacent to. It
also seemed to Densmore, as he sat watching the lame activity going on
out there, that this courtyard had become the tenant's common place.
His new brother-in-law stood at the bottom of the three concrete steps,
talking quietly to the childrens' father.
"What do you mean?!" The childrens' father belted out with a
burning cigarette in his right fingers, "You're landlord is on this
stuff half the time."
"Keep it down, man." Densmore's brother-in-law replied, looking
down at the ground and then back over his shoulder.
Densmore's brother-in-law seemed nervous to Densmore as he
watched him through the screen door. He knew they were about to do some
drugs, and that his sister probably would too, or at the very least,
that surely she had in the past. Looking out the back screen door, down
past the concrete steps, he saw thick white smoke emitting from a glass
tube in the childrens' father's left hand. Densmore, slightly
uncomfortable at this point, and very unimpressed, wished he were at
home in Baltimore. He wondered what he could tell his mother about
this.
Coughing, Densmore's brother-in-law held the pipe out towards
Densmore as if Densmore should be willing and eager to take it in his
hands, put it to his lips, and draw the toxic smoke into his lungs. The
smell was penetrating and stout. It brought Densmore immediately back
to the Baltimore Summer City Festival their parents had brought him and
his sister to when they were very young, maybe eight and nine years
old—and never gone back since. Even as an eight-year-old, Densmore had
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noticed two black girls walking on the sidewalk a few steps in front of
him and his family, handing back and forth something small and white,
giving off long drifts of dense, gray smoke. The smell was what stuck
mostly in Densmore's mind. It was a guttural stench; pungent, sweet and
heavy, and he knew, without knowing what it was, that is was bad. His
parents never said a word.
Densmore got up from the kitchen chair he was sitting in, bent
down, and picked up a malleable, brown substance, about the size of a
pea, from the kitchen floor. His sister and his sister's friends seemed
happy that he'd found it—whatever it was. Again, Densmore wasn't sure
exactly what it was, but when his sister's friend took it from
Densmore's fingers and pushed it carefully into one of the ends of the
glass tube, the evil grin that came across his sister's friend's face
concluded for Densmore that it was most likely something his own
parents would be highly disappointed he was involved with. More drugs,
thought Densmore, and wanted nothing further to do with the situation
unfolding in front of him.
An hour and a half of sitting in the dim, off-white kitchen watching
visitors come and go, each passing around the glass pipe, drinking
canned beer, smoking cigarettes and being forced to listen to many
stoned and pointless conversations, Densmore was ready to leave.
Without any further immediate concern for his sisters state, he stood
up, shoved his hands in his pockets, and walked out the front door—
hustling past the rows of metal inlaid mailboxes in the faux marble
wall, and out through the lobby entrance. It was cooler now, and dusk
fell in the streets.
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Densmore made it around the back side of the west end of the
complex before he realized the childrens' father from back in the
apartment was following him, apparently unconcerned about the welfare
of his own two kids.
"Walk with me." He offered Densmore, "I'll show you around the
neighborhood."
"Doesn't look there's much to it." Densmore said back, turning
all the way around.
"Ah, this is St. Louie, man, there's always more to it."
"Hmm." Densmore said. And turned back around to walk, somewhat
reluctantly, side by side with the childrens' father who hadn't broken
stride.
"There's a street two blocks away," He continued, "We call it The
Row. It's crazy, man, it's an old steel factory that closed down in the
nineteen-seventies. That's when this neighborhood was only, like,
twenty years old or something. Over the years since it closed, the
factory has basically become a shopping mall of freaks, man. For a
while it was only used by stupid teenage kids breaking windows and
drinking beers and shit..." The childrens' father paused and dragged on
his cigarette, letting out a long trail of white smoke that curled out
behind him and Densmore as they wormed through a narrow and wet
gangway.
It must have rained while I was inside the apartment, Densmore
thought to himself, noticing the darkened blacktop and puddles for the
first time since leaving his sister's building. Then the post-hard-rain
smell hit him and, like always, set into motion a cleansing and calming
effect that started in his nose, ran through his brain, and worked its
way steadily down to his feet.
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"...Then the bums moved in and took over." The childrens'
father's voice faded back into Densmore's consciousness. "It smelled so
bad like piss and shit by then no one wanted to go near it. People
complained, but the city doesn't give a fuckin' shit, man. What the
fuck do they care? Then the fuckin' gangs kicked out all the bums, and
killed a couple old guys while they were at it. I saw it in the
newspaper when I was in high school or some shit. Then people actually
used to come here to break dance when that was cool. Ha Ha! Everyone
thought the hard core breakers were in gangs like in the fuckin'
movies. Now people always say it's going to be turned into a dance
club, you know, like the warehouse clubs in Chicago and shit. I think
they're all just fuckin' rumors, nobody wants this dump. It would cost
a fuckin' fortune to fix up. It's a fuckin' dump, but it has some of
the best and most awesome graffiti art in the city. You gotta check it
out, but if you see anyone...well, just don't talk to no one."
Densmore was walking faster than he normally would want to only
to keep up with the childrens' father who was not only walking fast and
smoking a cigarette, but talking a mile a minute as well. Densmore
didn't know the childrens' father in the least, and, of course, didn't
know how he normally walked and talked, but he figured his behavior was
a direct result of the smoke from the pipe they'd all just been passing
around in his sister and brother-in-law's apartment. Densmore had seen
a lot of people crouched in corners on the streets, under the
boardwalks, in their cars, all over the place in L.A. down by the
beaches doing the same things his sister, her friends, and of course,
this guy, were doing. Densmore never really paid much attention to
them. No one, it seemed when he thought about it, did.
In the alley now, Densmore watched a ragged orange cat dart
upwards out of a dented metal garbage can and pause for a split second
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on the can's rim, to their left, as he and the childrens' father passed
by. The can ended up on its side with a piercing and echoing bang,
rolling around on the wet pavement in front of a two car garage door
badly in need of paint. The cat sprinted through the weeds.
75
The Psychology of Comedy
I was fired from the weekly newspaper where I had been working as a
photographer for nearly a year. I was a photojournalist first and a
damn good one. The best one in fact, according to many readers, this
town had ever seen. Apparently, that wasn't enough and I never really
understood the problem. I wasn't too controversial with the enviropolitical editorial columns I had been writing. I did satirically refer
to President Bush as George several times, but then again, who hasn't.
People of the community would stop me on the street every week to
give their thanks and offer a pat on the back for me doing my part to
turn this small town Montana paper into what they called a real paper.
Still though, I was fired. Nothing I could do. I wrote the publisher up
in his big fancy office with a view a long letter laying it all out for
him, in case he wasn't aware of the idiocy going down in our office. It
did no good at first, I still lost my job. But months later the editor
of the paper who made the decision to let me go and made herself the
star subject of my long letter was fired too. I guess it worked.
I still knew Chan Fosworth, the reporter I worked with for the
past eight months. I saw Chan on the street one day and she started
talking about how she was there to interview a man about something
going down in town. By this time I was now working as a freelance
writer for a statewide publication. There was some big event coming to
town everyone said. No one knew exactly what it was, but it was my job
to go find them and find out what they were bringing to town.
"What gives, Chan?"
"I don't even know Dempsey. I'm sick from drinking last night and
no one around here seems to know the first thing about some show coming
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to town in a couple hours. They call themselves organizers? This place
is a joke..."
"Hum."
"What?"
"Nothing Chan I was just thinking to myself I'd like to know
whats going on too." I walked away.
I did some digging, asked some obvious questions and met up with
a guy at long dinning table set up in a room with other folding tables
lined up covered in white paper table cloths. My informant was fairly
young and had his three year old kid with him. The kid was not very
obedient, nor very bright for that matter and stood laughing on the
long bench-like chairs of the folding dining table. His father and I
tried to talk around him. Finally after not listening several times to
his father telling him to get down, the boy fell backwards crashing
into the gentleman sitting to the right of the father and onto the
ground creating a loud and distracting disturbance. There under the
table they found him laying on his back crying out of shock but
physically undamaged.
They cleaned the kid up and the father and I got back to talking.
I learned this guy and his partner were setting up an art auction in
town. That was it that was the big news.
"Thats it?" I said. "Thats the big show? This place has art shows
all the time. Spaces and restaurants fill up with garbage paintings or
the same old cliches of horses in the mountains, people come to see and
thats that. No one buys anything, some asshole snobs get tipsey on ten
dollar wine and it all makes me sick. There has to be more. Tell me
something, man, anything."
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"Thats it, other than a guest comedian going to do a show who
hasnt been in front of a crowd for years I heard. Supposed to be a big
comeback thing or something. I don't know."
"Thanks." I walked away.
I secured my seat for the old comedian coming through. It was
someone like Lenny Bruce or George Carlon, but this guy was bearded,
huge and fresh out of the sanitarium where he'd been locked up for
years. No contact with the outside world. And these promoters thought
they'd bring him in to a sellout crowd in a small town and make some
profit for themselves.
Suddenly, I was at the show huge arena packed with people. I was
sitting at the table with a couple other people when I in walks "Lenny"
dark ceilings yelling fans, spotlight and camera flash bulbs snapping
around the stage I couldn't hear myself think. Although I could not see
him, I wondered what was going through Lenny's mind.
As they walked him past the table I could see how big he was in
real life. I could also see how heavily sedated they'd shot him full of
drugs for bringing him to do the show.
he followed obediently the big female assistant in whit jumpsuit
from the hospital looking backwards through vacant cold eyes craning
his neck over his right shoulder hands bound at the wrists to his belt,
the old comedian was pumped so full of knockout drugs a line of drool
ran out the right corner of his mouth and down his chin.
I didnt feel like being a great reporter at this point, and so I
didn't. I never even got this guys name, just continued to refer to him
as "Lenny". It fit him, I thought, even if it isn't his name. Lenny is
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a harmless name for a harmless man, this guy is just that, only he
doesn't know it he's so damn high.
The crowd was going nuts. Crazy fans yelling and screaming at
they didnt even know what. The camera flash bulbs must have been
pushing Lenny over the edge inside his head. either that or he never
even knew they were there.
The show never went on. Lenny was too far gone and could barely
stand up on his own. The doctors didn't know that right levels of
sedative medication and show him a bit too high. Lenny consequently
stumble around drooling at his fans, another victim of the practice of
modern medicine. Seeing Lenny reminded me of the primitive state of
man, and the primitive state of the psychological field.
Then Lenny started pushing his weight around and the guards had
to contain him. I felt bad for Lenny and the situation these moron
doctors and show promoters put him in for their own benefit. The
officials running the show decided they better get him out of there and
back to the psyche ward at the hospital. Lenny fought. He squirmed on
the ground tossing guards in uniforms with clubs like moths. Lenny's
harmless infantile drooling turned into violent mumbling. They got him
to the door and backed off. Lenny was too big and strong to push
through the exit way.
As he stood there tied up and stoned looking aimlessly around one
graying male one-time fan of Lenny's who somehow decided he would help
the situation stumbled drunkenly up to Lenny and jumped a scissors
kick, toe-bashing Lenny square in the stomach. Lenny whinst in a shock
of temporary pain, but didn't go down, just looked at the drunken fool
and laughed slowly.
I thought how Lenny would feel that kick in the morning maybe
when the drugs wore off and he was back in his clean white bed,
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breakfast being served on a cold metal tray, safe from the outside
world. Like usual, they'd administer him his pills of daily medications
in the little white paper cups next to his orange juice and scrambled
eggs. The white paper napkin folded to the side.
80
Motherwell and the ATL
I've always loved ink. Black ink. Black ink on canvas is the best. I've
always loved Buddha, and the thousands of monk painters that follow the
Dharma. I love Katsushika Hokusai, and a lot of other Japanese scroll
painters. But, when it comes to simplicity, mystery, and ink, nobody
beats Robert Motherwell. A few years ago, now, my Brother and Jennifer
lived in Atlanta, Georgia. I used to go down there on the Amtrak line
for street fairs with Blues Traveler, Blues Traveler at the Fabulous
Fox Theatre, or to hike the Appalachian Trail. One time I looked at a
volume of the history of the Amtrak lines while I was waiting for a
train near the Madison Street entrance in Union Station in Chicago. The
contiguous United States used to be completely covered by Amtrak
routes, you could go as many places by train back then as you can fly
to today. I should have lived back then. I think I was only two years
old when the federal government decided to cut out Amtrak lines. But
I've done my share of riding the only lines that still remain, and one
route in particular was my home away from home away from home on the
thousand mile sojourn from Chicago to what they now call "The ATL". I
used to get on the commuter train line from my Mom's house out in
Streamwood, Illinois, ride that 45 minutes due east into the Loop, walk
to the "long distance train" depots tucked away at Union, get on there
and head to Washington, D.C. or Philly. There are no direct routes from
Chicago to Atlanta, so you have to layover in one of these two east
coast cities. Sometimes the stop can be four or five hours. Four or
five hours goes by pretty quick walking around the Vietnam Memorial,
the Washington Monument, and the National Gallery of Art. The National
Gallery of Art could take up a week in itself. One time I ran (backpack
and all) from the Washington, D.C. train station, also called Union
Station, all the way to the NGA, just to make more time for my
otherwise very brief visit. So, I walked in the front doors. And the
place is enormous. It's one of those white marble foyers that fit you
inside of themselves like an ant in a castle. I walked in about twenty
feet and for whatever reason, I turned back around, and there, hanging
over a crevasse to a lower level, was a painting, thirty feet wide,
black paint on white canvas, by Robert Motherwell. Motherwell's
paintings. Robert Motherwell's paintings…--- Robert Motherwell's
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paintings are remediated versions of anything else printed, or painted,
or signed, or drawn, or etched or sketched. They are so simple and that
is the very point. Draw a line, or scribble a few, on paper. Now, take
a one millimeter square pixel of your paper sample there and blow it up
to thirty feet across. Pay no heed, really, to how high it becomes. I
bet when Robert Motherwell painted from life, in his studio, or en
plain aire in the forest or the desert, he just drug out this monster
roll of canvas. Then he pulled out a scrap of paper from his pocket
notebook and a scientific magnifying glass to view his subject matter.
I would like if he toted around a jewelers spy glass on an antique
chain around his neck, and no matter how many people asked if he sold
diamonds, he never told them what it was for. I am into nano-ontology,
he could say. I make paintings of things you cannot see. Motherwell was
into criminal forensics. He could paint your incriminating DNA. You
supply the strand of hair from your head. Motherwell was a master
illusionist. Everybody in the world, who stands in front of the
painting at the National Gallery of Art, says to their friend, where
did he find paint brushes six feet wide? How did he dip them into a
bucket seven feet across? Once we all decided his brushes must have
been to that scale in order to make strokes of these proportions, we
wonder how Robert Motherwell can get such magnificent detail of the
dark side of a molecule with his paintbrush which we've already
decided, in some paintings, must be six feet wide.
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