Born again jealousies: jimmy.mankind@gmail.com 1-1-11
We gotta wonder if the born agains aren’t cheering these days. The old end of the world meter must be closing in on midnight.
Birds are dropping out of the sky all over the world. Fish are bubbling up dead in Arcandsaw (although someone could have had a meth kit accident.)
Haiti is sick and homeless and starving again—what keeps the uber alles rich alive in that country? Huh.
The usual starvation and disease is everywhere. More wars in places no one can even get to…and for no reason. Suicides are up. Business is down. Education is too expensive…although some say it was never worth that much anyway—I know mine wasn’t worth the time. You cannot cram knowledge into your brain—one has to live it in.
But what for if the planet is gonna burn—or whatever way they predict it?
I bet the Southern Convention is jealous. Hey! He’s taking the birds up first! [Although it is nice to know he’s not so interested in their bodies—we don’t need those good ol’ homie asses up in Heaven. In Heaven everyone should have a nice ass or a virtual one that others can fantasize on.]
If he takes me I’m going in as a dancer, female, slinky with a nice face and no brain…I just wanna have fun! There are no hangovers in Heaven.
I gotta wonder tho’ why he’s taken fish…eeewwww! I’ve kinda wondered how people can eat fish for so long and to see God actually calling ‘em up…well, I guess He loves all his creatures. But black birds!
What’s He doing with that scene? There are so many pretty ones out there. Oh, I get it…black birds singing in the dead of night!!!
Clever.
Well, gotta go now, and wash up. It’s a lotta hard work being a dancer…but maybe in heaven you can just eat off the fat……
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
pieces of taxi
jimmy.mankind@gmail.com © 1/2010
1. Briefcase
Woman gets in back. Oriental. Chinese probably. Slender. Pretty. Nice biz suit.
Briefcase.
She tosses the briefcase on the seat ahead of herself as she slides in.
Where to?
The Richmond, she sighs.
Have a nice day?
It was OK.
So, what did you learn today?
[I’m always asking questions of the day. Political usually, sometimes philosophical, you might say. Anything to stir the pot. I can’t drive all night to various nowheres without some connection to somethin’. I already feel we are the most alienated society of all time. I think what we need now is a giant national Woodstock the size of Iowa.]
I learned, she said, that there is no such thing as constructive criticism.
Free ride.
—o—
2. Three suits.
Three business types hop in at the Regency–two men, one woman. All in wool business suits. Headed for a restaurant in North Beach for dinner.
They ride in Silence. I’m thinkin’ like this was gonna be a hard one.
I sort through my repertoire of conversation starters. Brain-files marked politics, economics, religion, or sports. I disqualify sex since the woman is out-numbered. I only bring up sex when I’m out-numbered. Or it’s even, of course. That doesn’t mean the roles are the same: I get to risk and they to decide. Equal but different. Funny, how life emulates computer science. Antogeny recapitulating philogeny, I guess. Man is like a river of electrons. Woman the switch.
Since they’re business people, I go ahead and ask, How’s biz?
Not bad, answers the man from the right rear.
So, I go, what do you guys think about the bailout?
Messy. They’re lost. The two men go. It’s gonna be a long time coming...he trails off.
Trying to figure out what that meant I toss out a feeler: Might it be the end of capitalism? I go. A bit cocky, but at the same time, tentative.
Well...uhh, goes one. Uhmmm, uhh..., goes the other.
You know, I continue. Communism–our other economic religion–is blown away.
Right? Since they tore down that wall in '89. Now us. (I say us). Won’t happen tomorrow, I suppose. But the unbridled laissez faire-style robber baron stuff is probably over. Don’t cha think?
I’m driving thru Chinatown as I say this.
Right rear goes, you might be right.
It’s a huge waste, says the Middle guy.
But then, the Middle guy goes, I think it’s the only way to go.
Not referrin’ to nothin’.
We need to keep free enterprise, I answer. I mean people need to start something they like. Something something they can depend on…with maybe a life expectancy less than the immortality of corporations. Maybe they should all have one function only, and not be able to buy other companies...? End of the Big C’s, I go. Chattering a bit. No commies, no robber barons, no...I dunno....
Then the lady speaks, as if from a self-imposed dormancy–ok, she sounds tired.
The next economic system, she says, will be Chocolate.
—o—
3. The artiste:
She slipped in the back-right in no hurry. Somehow we both managed to recognize and say we were writers. So I asked her the stupid question I always get. But she said she didn't want to get published.
What's up wit dat? I asked.
She loved the process...of writing, she said. The choices, the constant cuts, with the bright surprises, but that, she said, wasn’t it as much as:
A. I don't wanna be the court jester, she said. The joker who makes 'em laugh and forget Truth.
And,
B. I don't wanna be the messenger who'll tell 'em the Truth either. Cuz they'd kill me. Things only go smoothly when you're not getting anything done. When you truly create, all hell breaks loose.
Sister, you're an artist. You just earned a free ride
At her destination, as she slides out of the taxi, with one foot on the street, she turns to smile at me.
An artist, she says, never gives ‘em what they want.
—o—
4. something about afghanistan: Trip 2010-233. old vet, new vet
...what you whinin’ for?
Yer terrifyin’ chemwar and yer 150s and yer turtle-bots in VC redux? Sheesh
We fought back in the day where they had mosquitos! Fer cry-eye!
We din’t even had no war. They called it a “police action.” One that cost 50,000 ‘Merikin boys dead and buried. See what I’m sayin?
All they names on a big black rock a half mile long in DC.
Dat qualify?
So yer stupid winless “war” on terror cost us 5,000 boys [and some grrrls] dead and buried.
Desert wars are EeeeZee. Yur mechanized. We’re crawlin' fer cry-eye! Though mud paddies. To nowhere.
I hear tell we both killed 'bout the same # of non-combatants–you call 'laterals. Geez-sheets!
What kinda word is that?
2 million each. Non-com or 'laterals.
Ours took longer, they’re still dyin’.
Count ‘em.
Course, gotta admit yours’ll die for centuries, y’know, that DU stuff. Un-depleted you ask me. UDU. What you do is Voodoo Militaristics.
Uhmmm, what do you mean by that, exactly?
I mean your mess is so big that if you win you gonna bankrupt yerself tryin’ to clean it. Sheesh! We used white phosphorous on kids! Y’know, you saw the photos. No photos on your war!
Or you can drop a fire bomb: true hell: you go an’ toss some fine spray napalm from a plane --blow it fore it settles--kill ever’body ever damn thing that lives or breathes in a big circle. From six inches deep to twenty stories high. A dome of death. You call that war?
What is that you’re talkin’ about?
Don’t know the name...wanna call it a Daisy Cutter...that ain’t war...war is bayonets in guts and sliced arteries squirtin’ blood up ‘n da nite. Hand grenades bouncing into your hole...not no video game you drive to work 8 hours and weekends off.
You punks blow people up all the way from Vegas.?!
With weekends off...!
This where you live?
Whadyathink?
Free ride, Buddie. That’s what I think.
5. Trip 56-2010. whippersnappers.
Young guy gets in my taxi at the airport with his wife and a little girl. He’s got a big black halo ‘round his head on stiff little poles attached to his shoulders. After a better look I can see the “halo” got some sticks stuck right into the skull. Same for the shoulders. When he turns to talk, which ain’t often, he has to turn his whole body so his neck won’t swivel.
He’s got the Marine cut so I ask him. He says yeah. Get that apparatus from the Afghanis?
Wife blurts up first, Yes, he did. IED. It killed his best friend and nearly killed him!
Did not expect that outburst.
Shrapnel just missed my spinal cord. He explains. By a quarter inch.
I look the situation over as we pull out of the airport. Pretty hectic behind us tonite. Pretty wife to die for. I pause to check out with the mag card press it to the reader screen. Look back at the little girl about 4 hugging her dolly. Boy! I go. Sort of losing it. . But I say, Prettiest little girl…what’s your name, angel? I fergit what she said. I flash one more glance at the wife–I swear. By this time, 10 seconds, the A-hole driver behind me is honking. I flip ‘m off high out the window so the young wife don’t think I’m a jerk. We head out.
Spent five and one fucking half hours waiting for planes here, snaps the Marine. If they don’t get their shit together...I dunno...tomorrow we gotta be in Fresno.
Why you gotta be in Fresno?
Everybody’s waiting.
Relax. I tells 'im. One, you’re a national hero. The airline company is heartsick about your inconvenience, and I’m as sure as hell [on this planet that'd be where you just came from] 'bout that. They are probably sick about disappointing you. But they do not want to kill you by puttin' y'all in a plane with mechanical difficulties or some other kind o’ danger when you are about two days away from paradise. You hear me, Marine?
He looked at me all stem and stalk and full of macho indignation at me telling him any shit at all. Any kinda shit. Especially true shit.
Nobody has a better shot at happiness than you right now, I go ahead and blurt. Just look at that back seat! I was not lying and they knew it. A woman knows how good looking she is...and, how good she wants to be as a person. She spoke:
He got hit on the road. Just driving along. We are so happy to have him back with us....
And she trailed off.
I didn’t want this to get saccharine, nor worse, theoretical. For all I knew the wife was a lazy, ego-maniacal heroin addict who’s swinging with the crack heads. All I’m sayin’ is she did not look tha part...and dammit, I wanted them to have a chance as if some dumb cabbie’s tough love is gonna add to their game...and not detract.
So I asked him, What’s goin’ on over there? What’s it really like? They never tell us anything.
It’s fucked, he said.
In what way?
The people are fucked. The government is fucked. It’ll never work. I think we oughta nuke the entire country and bring everyone home. Nuke the whole place.
I felt like a tipping point of some kind like I was in the tilt position to be able to have some positive input–as a random source of some sort of coincidology. Just one American speakin’ to another.
I felt, if not pressure, then the seriousness of my imagined responsibility. Under the gun so to speak.
I asked him. You ever hear of Malaya Joya? No, he hadn't. Remember that name, I told him. (Although i hadn't. I found out later it’s Malalai.)
Why?
She agrees with you. About gettin’ out anyway. Don’t imagine she’d go for the nuke‘m part, tho. When she was just 18 she taught little girls to read in secret schools. She’s 25 or 6 now. She’s the youngest woman, of the few ever elected, in the Loya Jirga. She rocks, man. She wants us out. She says you cannot bring democracy to a people. It has to grow up from within. And she would work to teach girls to read and vote and work and go to school like they never could before.
I went on a little roll: teachin’ girls. That’s what you want, I bet. And let girls become all they can. Let ‘em learn physics. Become doctors, scientists, architects, politicians. I can’t believe women would have got us into this mess...
He said yeah. I’ll look her up.
He said the hotel name they were goin’ Snarled a bit. I said, Paradise. You got one night of paradise looming. Don't blow it, i mumbled. I had loved these guys at first sight. Man, I said, enjoy every breath of free air you get with these two angels. Take that hotel to heart. It’s free, huh?
Oh yeah, he goes.
Get smart, says I. It’s a holiday. Now tell me what’s it like.
You wanna know what it’s like?
For sure.
OK. We get a report from a farm. The farmer had been having trouble with the Taliban. Stealing his food and shit. Now and then a goat…
Yeah?
So we convoy up an’ head out there. It’s good intel. We get into a fire fight, and we chase them away. So it’s over quickly.
Kill any?
Yeah. Several. But I didn’t see the count. Don’t matter. We didn’t get ‘em all. They always fade into the hills. So we return to the farm. The owner is an ass-hole.
How so?
He’s pissed we upset his schedule. Says his goats and cows are upset. Gotta milk ‘em and the chickens are over the place. His wife is crying. The Captain is trying to pacify this idiot. Then, in the middle of him complainin,’ he spits in the Captain’s face.
What?
Real a-hole.
I look back at the wife. She is nodding at me. Positive. About the constabulary idea or what? The whole interrogation? This is de-briefing taxi style. I’m into it.
What did the Captain do?
Do? He did what he had to do?
He shot the guy!?
No. He ordered the house cleared. Then he had a tank run over it. Back and forth a couple times.
Gees-says.
That shuts ‘im up.
I bet. Then what?
We left.
There was a bit of silence there. The little girl was looking out the window when I took a glance in the mirror. She was hugging her dolly and looking out her window at the night. At Millbrae. From on the bay side of the freeway a big expanse of darkness looms off to our left. Salty water, calm and flat.
I said, if you got time. You get up early. You go for a walk here ‘cross this street. Big, long park. Goes for miles along the bay. (I didn’t know that for sure.) You can see the birds flyin’ in under the jets. See the jets flying in to come and get you outa here. And I hope you come back.
Yeah, great.
Then it came to me.
The farmer. The captain. Had they talked before?
I suppose. Some way we had to know. Or someone else might’ve carried the message in. There would have been some questions. From Intel. How many insurgents? Maybe some directions. I guess. Stuff like that.
And it was friendly?
I didn’t see that.
Y’know, I said.
The genius of those two, I thought as we pulled into the driveway of a very nice-looking hotel.
I ask the girl if she ever stayed at a hotel before. Unt-huh, she says.
[I’m going bananas inside.]
But I tell the girl, You gotta try room service and free movies and order a hot chocolate and try blueberry pancakes for breakfast...that’s what you do in hotels. Use everything. Use all the shampoo…
Mom was sliding over to the girl’s side to get out. Daddy was pulling an airline voucher out of his shirt for the ride. I’d seen those before. Heck, happened to me one time. I’d had an angel with me too.
Gettin’ them together like that, almost out of the taxi, I said to the Marine, They did it so he wouldn’t get killed.
Huh?
I mean, you guys couldn’t be there all the time. You had to return to base. Or maybe the Intel was from a neighbor who coveted the farm. The Taliban might’ve killed this farmer if you hadn’t knocked his house down. It was for his survival. Your Captain only had to wipe some spit off his face and knock down a crappy house. He saves the whole family.
Huhm…he goes.
You got the same choice here. Only you won’t get spit on. You get loved on. You’re the luckiest man in the world. If I were you, I’d wear that halo 'round your head for as long as it takes to never go back.
His wife touched my arm.
He nodded.
Thanks. She said.
Peace, I said.
Driving back to the airport and the short line, I almost cried like a baby.
Joya. I kept saying it. Thinkin’ how I forgot her first name in the tears...and the mess of it all.
---o---
jimmy.mankind@gmail.com © 1/2010
1. Briefcase
Woman gets in back. Oriental. Chinese probably. Slender. Pretty. Nice biz suit.
Briefcase.
She tosses the briefcase on the seat ahead of herself as she slides in.
Where to?
The Richmond, she sighs.
Have a nice day?
It was OK.
So, what did you learn today?
[I’m always asking questions of the day. Political usually, sometimes philosophical, you might say. Anything to stir the pot. I can’t drive all night to various nowheres without some connection to somethin’. I already feel we are the most alienated society of all time. I think what we need now is a giant national Woodstock the size of Iowa.]
I learned, she said, that there is no such thing as constructive criticism.
Free ride.
—o—
2. Three suits.
Three business types hop in at the Regency–two men, one woman. All in wool business suits. Headed for a restaurant in North Beach for dinner.
They ride in Silence. I’m thinkin’ like this was gonna be a hard one.
I sort through my repertoire of conversation starters. Brain-files marked politics, economics, religion, or sports. I disqualify sex since the woman is out-numbered. I only bring up sex when I’m out-numbered. Or it’s even, of course. That doesn’t mean the roles are the same: I get to risk and they to decide. Equal but different. Funny, how life emulates computer science. Antogeny recapitulating philogeny, I guess. Man is like a river of electrons. Woman the switch.
Since they’re business people, I go ahead and ask, How’s biz?
Not bad, answers the man from the right rear.
So, I go, what do you guys think about the bailout?
Messy. They’re lost. The two men go. It’s gonna be a long time coming...he trails off.
Trying to figure out what that meant I toss out a feeler: Might it be the end of capitalism? I go. A bit cocky, but at the same time, tentative.
Well...uhh, goes one. Uhmmm, uhh..., goes the other.
You know, I continue. Communism–our other economic religion–is blown away.
Right? Since they tore down that wall in '89. Now us. (I say us). Won’t happen tomorrow, I suppose. But the unbridled laissez faire-style robber baron stuff is probably over. Don’t cha think?
I’m driving thru Chinatown as I say this.
Right rear goes, you might be right.
It’s a huge waste, says the Middle guy.
But then, the Middle guy goes, I think it’s the only way to go.
Not referrin’ to nothin’.
We need to keep free enterprise, I answer. I mean people need to start something they like. Something something they can depend on…with maybe a life expectancy less than the immortality of corporations. Maybe they should all have one function only, and not be able to buy other companies...? End of the Big C’s, I go. Chattering a bit. No commies, no robber barons, no...I dunno....
Then the lady speaks, as if from a self-imposed dormancy–ok, she sounds tired.
The next economic system, she says, will be Chocolate.
—o—
3. The artiste:
She slipped in the back-right in no hurry. Somehow we both managed to recognize and say we were writers. So I asked her the stupid question I always get. But she said she didn't want to get published.
What's up wit dat? I asked.
She loved the process...of writing, she said. The choices, the constant cuts, with the bright surprises, but that, she said, wasn’t it as much as:
A. I don't wanna be the court jester, she said. The joker who makes 'em laugh and forget Truth.
And,
B. I don't wanna be the messenger who'll tell 'em the Truth either. Cuz they'd kill me. Things only go smoothly when you're not getting anything done. When you truly create, all hell breaks loose.
Sister, you're an artist. You just earned a free ride
At her destination, as she slides out of the taxi, with one foot on the street, she turns to smile at me.
An artist, she says, never gives ‘em what they want.
—o—
4. something about afghanistan: Trip 2010-233. old vet, new vet
...what you whinin’ for?
Yer terrifyin’ chemwar and yer 150s and yer turtle-bots in VC redux? Sheesh
We fought back in the day where they had mosquitos! Fer cry-eye!
We din’t even had no war. They called it a “police action.” One that cost 50,000 ‘Merikin boys dead and buried. See what I’m sayin?
All they names on a big black rock a half mile long in DC.
Dat qualify?
So yer stupid winless “war” on terror cost us 5,000 boys [and some grrrls] dead and buried.
Desert wars are EeeeZee. Yur mechanized. We’re crawlin' fer cry-eye! Though mud paddies. To nowhere.
I hear tell we both killed 'bout the same # of non-combatants–you call 'laterals. Geez-sheets!
What kinda word is that?
2 million each. Non-com or 'laterals.
Ours took longer, they’re still dyin’.
Count ‘em.
Course, gotta admit yours’ll die for centuries, y’know, that DU stuff. Un-depleted you ask me. UDU. What you do is Voodoo Militaristics.
Uhmmm, what do you mean by that, exactly?
I mean your mess is so big that if you win you gonna bankrupt yerself tryin’ to clean it. Sheesh! We used white phosphorous on kids! Y’know, you saw the photos. No photos on your war!
Or you can drop a fire bomb: true hell: you go an’ toss some fine spray napalm from a plane --blow it fore it settles--kill ever’body ever damn thing that lives or breathes in a big circle. From six inches deep to twenty stories high. A dome of death. You call that war?
What is that you’re talkin’ about?
Don’t know the name...wanna call it a Daisy Cutter...that ain’t war...war is bayonets in guts and sliced arteries squirtin’ blood up ‘n da nite. Hand grenades bouncing into your hole...not no video game you drive to work 8 hours and weekends off.
You punks blow people up all the way from Vegas.?!
With weekends off...!
This where you live?
Whadyathink?
Free ride, Buddie. That’s what I think.
5. Trip 56-2010. whippersnappers.
Young guy gets in my taxi at the airport with his wife and a little girl. He’s got a big black halo ‘round his head on stiff little poles attached to his shoulders. After a better look I can see the “halo” got some sticks stuck right into the skull. Same for the shoulders. When he turns to talk, which ain’t often, he has to turn his whole body so his neck won’t swivel.
He’s got the Marine cut so I ask him. He says yeah. Get that apparatus from the Afghanis?
Wife blurts up first, Yes, he did. IED. It killed his best friend and nearly killed him!
Did not expect that outburst.
Shrapnel just missed my spinal cord. He explains. By a quarter inch.
I look the situation over as we pull out of the airport. Pretty hectic behind us tonite. Pretty wife to die for. I pause to check out with the mag card press it to the reader screen. Look back at the little girl about 4 hugging her dolly. Boy! I go. Sort of losing it. . But I say, Prettiest little girl…what’s your name, angel? I fergit what she said. I flash one more glance at the wife–I swear. By this time, 10 seconds, the A-hole driver behind me is honking. I flip ‘m off high out the window so the young wife don’t think I’m a jerk. We head out.
Spent five and one fucking half hours waiting for planes here, snaps the Marine. If they don’t get their shit together...I dunno...tomorrow we gotta be in Fresno.
Why you gotta be in Fresno?
Everybody’s waiting.
Relax. I tells 'im. One, you’re a national hero. The airline company is heartsick about your inconvenience, and I’m as sure as hell [on this planet that'd be where you just came from] 'bout that. They are probably sick about disappointing you. But they do not want to kill you by puttin' y'all in a plane with mechanical difficulties or some other kind o’ danger when you are about two days away from paradise. You hear me, Marine?
He looked at me all stem and stalk and full of macho indignation at me telling him any shit at all. Any kinda shit. Especially true shit.
Nobody has a better shot at happiness than you right now, I go ahead and blurt. Just look at that back seat! I was not lying and they knew it. A woman knows how good looking she is...and, how good she wants to be as a person. She spoke:
He got hit on the road. Just driving along. We are so happy to have him back with us....
And she trailed off.
I didn’t want this to get saccharine, nor worse, theoretical. For all I knew the wife was a lazy, ego-maniacal heroin addict who’s swinging with the crack heads. All I’m sayin’ is she did not look tha part...and dammit, I wanted them to have a chance as if some dumb cabbie’s tough love is gonna add to their game...and not detract.
So I asked him, What’s goin’ on over there? What’s it really like? They never tell us anything.
It’s fucked, he said.
In what way?
The people are fucked. The government is fucked. It’ll never work. I think we oughta nuke the entire country and bring everyone home. Nuke the whole place.
I felt like a tipping point of some kind like I was in the tilt position to be able to have some positive input–as a random source of some sort of coincidology. Just one American speakin’ to another.
I felt, if not pressure, then the seriousness of my imagined responsibility. Under the gun so to speak.
I asked him. You ever hear of Malaya Joya? No, he hadn't. Remember that name, I told him. (Although i hadn't. I found out later it’s Malalai.)
Why?
She agrees with you. About gettin’ out anyway. Don’t imagine she’d go for the nuke‘m part, tho. When she was just 18 she taught little girls to read in secret schools. She’s 25 or 6 now. She’s the youngest woman, of the few ever elected, in the Loya Jirga. She rocks, man. She wants us out. She says you cannot bring democracy to a people. It has to grow up from within. And she would work to teach girls to read and vote and work and go to school like they never could before.
I went on a little roll: teachin’ girls. That’s what you want, I bet. And let girls become all they can. Let ‘em learn physics. Become doctors, scientists, architects, politicians. I can’t believe women would have got us into this mess...
He said yeah. I’ll look her up.
He said the hotel name they were goin’ Snarled a bit. I said, Paradise. You got one night of paradise looming. Don't blow it, i mumbled. I had loved these guys at first sight. Man, I said, enjoy every breath of free air you get with these two angels. Take that hotel to heart. It’s free, huh?
Oh yeah, he goes.
Get smart, says I. It’s a holiday. Now tell me what’s it like.
You wanna know what it’s like?
For sure.
OK. We get a report from a farm. The farmer had been having trouble with the Taliban. Stealing his food and shit. Now and then a goat…
Yeah?
So we convoy up an’ head out there. It’s good intel. We get into a fire fight, and we chase them away. So it’s over quickly.
Kill any?
Yeah. Several. But I didn’t see the count. Don’t matter. We didn’t get ‘em all. They always fade into the hills. So we return to the farm. The owner is an ass-hole.
How so?
He’s pissed we upset his schedule. Says his goats and cows are upset. Gotta milk ‘em and the chickens are over the place. His wife is crying. The Captain is trying to pacify this idiot. Then, in the middle of him complainin,’ he spits in the Captain’s face.
What?
Real a-hole.
I look back at the wife. She is nodding at me. Positive. About the constabulary idea or what? The whole interrogation? This is de-briefing taxi style. I’m into it.
What did the Captain do?
Do? He did what he had to do?
He shot the guy!?
No. He ordered the house cleared. Then he had a tank run over it. Back and forth a couple times.
Gees-says.
That shuts ‘im up.
I bet. Then what?
We left.
There was a bit of silence there. The little girl was looking out the window when I took a glance in the mirror. She was hugging her dolly and looking out her window at the night. At Millbrae. From on the bay side of the freeway a big expanse of darkness looms off to our left. Salty water, calm and flat.
I said, if you got time. You get up early. You go for a walk here ‘cross this street. Big, long park. Goes for miles along the bay. (I didn’t know that for sure.) You can see the birds flyin’ in under the jets. See the jets flying in to come and get you outa here. And I hope you come back.
Yeah, great.
Then it came to me.
The farmer. The captain. Had they talked before?
I suppose. Some way we had to know. Or someone else might’ve carried the message in. There would have been some questions. From Intel. How many insurgents? Maybe some directions. I guess. Stuff like that.
And it was friendly?
I didn’t see that.
Y’know, I said.
The genius of those two, I thought as we pulled into the driveway of a very nice-looking hotel.
I ask the girl if she ever stayed at a hotel before. Unt-huh, she says.
[I’m going bananas inside.]
But I tell the girl, You gotta try room service and free movies and order a hot chocolate and try blueberry pancakes for breakfast...that’s what you do in hotels. Use everything. Use all the shampoo…
Mom was sliding over to the girl’s side to get out. Daddy was pulling an airline voucher out of his shirt for the ride. I’d seen those before. Heck, happened to me one time. I’d had an angel with me too.
Gettin’ them together like that, almost out of the taxi, I said to the Marine, They did it so he wouldn’t get killed.
Huh?
I mean, you guys couldn’t be there all the time. You had to return to base. Or maybe the Intel was from a neighbor who coveted the farm. The Taliban might’ve killed this farmer if you hadn’t knocked his house down. It was for his survival. Your Captain only had to wipe some spit off his face and knock down a crappy house. He saves the whole family.
Huhm…he goes.
You got the same choice here. Only you won’t get spit on. You get loved on. You’re the luckiest man in the world. If I were you, I’d wear that halo 'round your head for as long as it takes to never go back.
His wife touched my arm.
He nodded.
Thanks. She said.
Peace, I said.
Driving back to the airport and the short line, I almost cried like a baby.
Joya. I kept saying it. Thinkin’ how I forgot her first name in the tears...and the mess of it all.
---o---
end of the ride
the end of the ride
jimmy mankind
© 6-1-10
“Omigawd! I’m broke!” she said. “We have to find an ATM.”
“No problem. Which way?”
Turn off here.
Which way?
Uhm, that way?
Which that?
Right.
Got it.
Make it my other right. Sorry. Can you make a U?
I see it.
She got out. Wobbling on her heels. Not as tall and gawky as I’d thought. Now she seemed fragile, vulnerable to the forces of darkness. Her light was low. Scattered by the shards of crashed memories perhaps.
She floundered at the machine. Seemed to be inserting new cards or the same one over and over again.
Any luck? I shouted.
I’m so sorry. Her shoulders slumping. I’ve been denied access.
C’mere. I said. Siddown.
She returned.
Get in.
I reached around and flipped the door open to her.
She hesitated.
You have to pay. So let’s make a plan.
I’m so sorry. My husband and I broke up. Maybe he took all the money. Denied access? How does that happen? My jacket is calf skin. It’s worth way more than the ride.
The meter was over 30 already. And ticking.
No. I said. Too much trouble. They’ll hold it for 30 days and give it to some hooker. Or you’ll have to go down to the produce district, and pay the fare to get your jacket back. Either way they’ll tell me you claimed it. Whatever story they’ll think up leaves me out or costs you extra.
What then?
Write me a poem. I blurted. Do that conscientiously. And true. I will take you straight home --meter off.
I can’t, she cried.
You have to and you can. Everyone’s a poet. [That’s why they’re so poor. I thought.]
I handed her My clipboard from My back pack. Fresh white blank sheets; a blue pen.
Go! I said.
I got out of the taxi, taking the keys. I locked the doors. The street was shimmery from the rain like a black and white movie.
Coffee? I gestured at a café half a block back.
No thanks.
She bent over the paper. She started writing. When I returned the poem was on the front seat with the lights off. She was in the back, naked, lying across the seat like a page to be written upon. She was one of those women who looked better with her clothes off. In the street light... I read her poem.
Here is what she wrote:
“i am skin
i have no heart
no eyes no taste no thoughts no brain
my muscle is the kind they allow
japanese-massaged beef to have
if anyone wanted to eat me
I would taste
Bitter
I’m not able to do a thing--I cannot act think care
yet my bones are perfect
they set the stage for my surface picture of skin and hair and nose
cheek bones high--admirably amiable cheekbones
how deep is that?
I am skin A tight wrap
My skin is a highway to nowhere
You can lick me kick me stick me trick me prick me dick me:
leave no marks please
I am my skin as shallow as that
But my skin is holy. It is the pinnacle of god’s creation. I devote myself to its
maintenance and preservation.
My skin shields me from feeling.
My skin is waterproof and keeps my guts from spilling when I cry.
Emotionless.
My skin is emotionless. Kiss me there.
My skin is alive–everything it hides and contains works well,
but is dead.
Somehow dead.
My soul is back down this dark road someplace.
My displaced angel replaced it with tears
that will run off someone else’s newly handy hopeful skin
and drip off My chin into this poem.
Oh grrrl...where are you?
—o—
When I finished reading I turned around and stared at her, soaking up her mute message, recording her skin in the My docs of My brain–she was like a long, cool drink on Mars, a vanilla ice smoothie in the squalid Sahel refugee camp I kept in My Taxi-mind to keep me moving relentlessly like a shark. I re-read the poem. Looked at her again. Felt for her story: another no fault dirty rotten divorce. So a lie lived out as living proof of lies. Me having lived a few myself.
So fear of future failing. Our grand epidemic.
Not that I had this new indelible memory: a slice of art immortalizing her lost spirit for a mere practicality: a retrun to her broken home.
Pragmatically, I turned the key on. The meter off. And asked her my favorite question, Where to?
Are you going to drive me naked? She answered.
We’re all naked out here, I said.
Everyone’s searching for something that fits.
Nothing fits forever.
Things wear out, she said.
It’s been my pleasure to serve you, I told her.
She began to dress in my mirror.
This time/it’s your gift/you wear it well, I thought.
Before I could put it in gear, a tear broke loose and ran down my cheek. It dropped off My chin into her poem before I could catch it.
I watched her run to her house, no longer a home, not looking back.
--End of the ride--
—o—
jimmy mankind
© 6-1-10
“Omigawd! I’m broke!” she said. “We have to find an ATM.”
“No problem. Which way?”
Turn off here.
Which way?
Uhm, that way?
Which that?
Right.
Got it.
Make it my other right. Sorry. Can you make a U?
I see it.
She got out. Wobbling on her heels. Not as tall and gawky as I’d thought. Now she seemed fragile, vulnerable to the forces of darkness. Her light was low. Scattered by the shards of crashed memories perhaps.
She floundered at the machine. Seemed to be inserting new cards or the same one over and over again.
Any luck? I shouted.
I’m so sorry. Her shoulders slumping. I’ve been denied access.
C’mere. I said. Siddown.
She returned.
Get in.
I reached around and flipped the door open to her.
She hesitated.
You have to pay. So let’s make a plan.
I’m so sorry. My husband and I broke up. Maybe he took all the money. Denied access? How does that happen? My jacket is calf skin. It’s worth way more than the ride.
The meter was over 30 already. And ticking.
No. I said. Too much trouble. They’ll hold it for 30 days and give it to some hooker. Or you’ll have to go down to the produce district, and pay the fare to get your jacket back. Either way they’ll tell me you claimed it. Whatever story they’ll think up leaves me out or costs you extra.
What then?
Write me a poem. I blurted. Do that conscientiously. And true. I will take you straight home --meter off.
I can’t, she cried.
You have to and you can. Everyone’s a poet. [That’s why they’re so poor. I thought.]
I handed her My clipboard from My back pack. Fresh white blank sheets; a blue pen.
Go! I said.
I got out of the taxi, taking the keys. I locked the doors. The street was shimmery from the rain like a black and white movie.
Coffee? I gestured at a café half a block back.
No thanks.
She bent over the paper. She started writing. When I returned the poem was on the front seat with the lights off. She was in the back, naked, lying across the seat like a page to be written upon. She was one of those women who looked better with her clothes off. In the street light... I read her poem.
Here is what she wrote:
“i am skin
i have no heart
no eyes no taste no thoughts no brain
my muscle is the kind they allow
japanese-massaged beef to have
if anyone wanted to eat me
I would taste
Bitter
I’m not able to do a thing--I cannot act think care
yet my bones are perfect
they set the stage for my surface picture of skin and hair and nose
cheek bones high--admirably amiable cheekbones
how deep is that?
I am skin A tight wrap
My skin is a highway to nowhere
You can lick me kick me stick me trick me prick me dick me:
leave no marks please
I am my skin as shallow as that
But my skin is holy. It is the pinnacle of god’s creation. I devote myself to its
maintenance and preservation.
My skin shields me from feeling.
My skin is waterproof and keeps my guts from spilling when I cry.
Emotionless.
My skin is emotionless. Kiss me there.
My skin is alive–everything it hides and contains works well,
but is dead.
Somehow dead.
My soul is back down this dark road someplace.
My displaced angel replaced it with tears
that will run off someone else’s newly handy hopeful skin
and drip off My chin into this poem.
Oh grrrl...where are you?
—o—
When I finished reading I turned around and stared at her, soaking up her mute message, recording her skin in the My docs of My brain–she was like a long, cool drink on Mars, a vanilla ice smoothie in the squalid Sahel refugee camp I kept in My Taxi-mind to keep me moving relentlessly like a shark. I re-read the poem. Looked at her again. Felt for her story: another no fault dirty rotten divorce. So a lie lived out as living proof of lies. Me having lived a few myself.
So fear of future failing. Our grand epidemic.
Not that I had this new indelible memory: a slice of art immortalizing her lost spirit for a mere practicality: a retrun to her broken home.
Pragmatically, I turned the key on. The meter off. And asked her my favorite question, Where to?
Are you going to drive me naked? She answered.
We’re all naked out here, I said.
Everyone’s searching for something that fits.
Nothing fits forever.
Things wear out, she said.
It’s been my pleasure to serve you, I told her.
She began to dress in my mirror.
This time/it’s your gift/you wear it well, I thought.
Before I could put it in gear, a tear broke loose and ran down my cheek. It dropped off My chin into her poem before I could catch it.
I watched her run to her house, no longer a home, not looking back.
--End of the ride--
—o—
Monday, May 24, 2010
Obama's tautological error.
That's right i said tautological. Because when Obiwan, you are our only hope, speaks, it's always the same ol' same ol'. He tends to repeat some amorphous vagueness similar to a Brave New World Order. Party like it's 1984. There are something like 26 permits by now for the same ol' deep dish pizza, i mean deep water oil rig drilling that we have seen bubbling up in the form of a gusher...that's right, everybody! A gusher! let's dance under the black rain's a-gonna fall. We got us a gusher!
WOW, let's do the ARCTIC!
Salazar has the momentum. He's feeling it now! On Friday he will decide whether or not to open up the Arctic for deep dish...i mean, deep water drilling. And from there all the way across Alaska to ahhh, uhm, er...Valdez, by pipeline for transfer to ocean going tankers. Failsafe!
Who wants to ride this bomb waving their cowboy hat?
Now let's turn to state banking: bet you can't wait.
What are the chances of state banks getting going full speed if this much inertia is packed up in the oil industry? We shouldn't even be looking for more oil! We should be experimenting with wind and solar as if we were in a survival space race.
But we're not.
Money is bigger and more powerfully entrenched than even oil is. Along comes our little banks. 50 of 'em. And so many billions are to be syphoned off from Wall Street back to the People's Banks? This is the fight. The problem is not how does it work: the problem is will they let it work?
There is no way BP knows how to plug this gusher. Never did never will. They are lost at sea. What happens if they cannot plug it? Will they EVER destroy this well? The government is totally corrupt and yet it must be charged with this task. Before any more oil wells are drilled or any more economic power drifts to Wall St. Same exact deal. The Big Banks, the TBTFs, are drilling into our economy to maintain a dysfunctional inertia of elitist plutocractic piracy. Same way the oil companies trash the planet to augment their income only.
For a state bank to be viable we shall have to eliminate the corporate legal structure completely.
Remember your comparative economics: a corporation is a Stalinist, or Maoist, communist dictatorship with only one goal in mind. Money. Plus acquisition of the power to keep it that way. The only difference between corporations and communism is the slightly more permissive manner people can quit. You try to climb the wall from within the USSR, you die. Quit your job, you lose your retirement, pension, health care, whatever...and you're on your own. May be a big deal or not. The point is that the CEO is beholden to no one until he opts for his golden parachute, and so is a dictator.
All these many corporate dictators are aligned against state banks. There will be more the closer we get to reality. So far this project has slipped under the radar. So it seems to me we have to capture the public's attention and play the change-the-economy card. This is the coming of the age of altruism anyway, so we might as well ring the bell for it. It's coming in anyway.
But these are the Death Throes of Capitalism.
Oblama's big reg. on banks is gonna be a Big Deception.
Same for oil. It's going on now. More drilling is on the way. Plus clean coal--that oxymoron.
Think about it.
If we let free enterprise go and grow alongside state banks (because state banks are benign) then we can and should kill the big conglomerate holding companies once and for all time.
That is the fight.
Corporate capitalism has to grow; Gaia feels that growth like a cancer eating away at Her ability to sustain us. She'll have to act. She be forced to kill us all for the blatant selfishness of a few, the pluto-klepts. So Obama has to decide: is he with us or agin us. Oh, that was Bush's line, remember? How they turn everything around 180 degrees?
The test case is upon us. Full blast.
...even Iran offers help...
...as did Cuba before.
That's right i said tautological. Because when Obiwan, you are our only hope, speaks, it's always the same ol' same ol'. He tends to repeat some amorphous vagueness similar to a Brave New World Order. Party like it's 1984. There are something like 26 permits by now for the same ol' deep dish pizza, i mean deep water oil rig drilling that we have seen bubbling up in the form of a gusher...that's right, everybody! A gusher! let's dance under the black rain's a-gonna fall. We got us a gusher!
WOW, let's do the ARCTIC!
Salazar has the momentum. He's feeling it now! On Friday he will decide whether or not to open up the Arctic for deep dish...i mean, deep water drilling. And from there all the way across Alaska to ahhh, uhm, er...Valdez, by pipeline for transfer to ocean going tankers. Failsafe!
Who wants to ride this bomb waving their cowboy hat?
Now let's turn to state banking: bet you can't wait.
What are the chances of state banks getting going full speed if this much inertia is packed up in the oil industry? We shouldn't even be looking for more oil! We should be experimenting with wind and solar as if we were in a survival space race.
But we're not.
Money is bigger and more powerfully entrenched than even oil is. Along comes our little banks. 50 of 'em. And so many billions are to be syphoned off from Wall Street back to the People's Banks? This is the fight. The problem is not how does it work: the problem is will they let it work?
There is no way BP knows how to plug this gusher. Never did never will. They are lost at sea. What happens if they cannot plug it? Will they EVER destroy this well? The government is totally corrupt and yet it must be charged with this task. Before any more oil wells are drilled or any more economic power drifts to Wall St. Same exact deal. The Big Banks, the TBTFs, are drilling into our economy to maintain a dysfunctional inertia of elitist plutocractic piracy. Same way the oil companies trash the planet to augment their income only.
For a state bank to be viable we shall have to eliminate the corporate legal structure completely.
Remember your comparative economics: a corporation is a Stalinist, or Maoist, communist dictatorship with only one goal in mind. Money. Plus acquisition of the power to keep it that way. The only difference between corporations and communism is the slightly more permissive manner people can quit. You try to climb the wall from within the USSR, you die. Quit your job, you lose your retirement, pension, health care, whatever...and you're on your own. May be a big deal or not. The point is that the CEO is beholden to no one until he opts for his golden parachute, and so is a dictator.
All these many corporate dictators are aligned against state banks. There will be more the closer we get to reality. So far this project has slipped under the radar. So it seems to me we have to capture the public's attention and play the change-the-economy card. This is the coming of the age of altruism anyway, so we might as well ring the bell for it. It's coming in anyway.
But these are the Death Throes of Capitalism.
Oblama's big reg. on banks is gonna be a Big Deception.
Same for oil. It's going on now. More drilling is on the way. Plus clean coal--that oxymoron.
Think about it.
If we let free enterprise go and grow alongside state banks (because state banks are benign) then we can and should kill the big conglomerate holding companies once and for all time.
That is the fight.
Corporate capitalism has to grow; Gaia feels that growth like a cancer eating away at Her ability to sustain us. She'll have to act. She be forced to kill us all for the blatant selfishness of a few, the pluto-klepts. So Obama has to decide: is he with us or agin us. Oh, that was Bush's line, remember? How they turn everything around 180 degrees?
The test case is upon us. Full blast.
...even Iran offers help...
...as did Cuba before.
"The metaphysician often takes a dim view of economic exchange. it is the realm of mere agreement and conventional evaluations, rather than intrinsic qualities. but agreement and convention, if consulted, provide a helpful check on your own subjectivity--they offer proof that you are not insane, or at least a more robust presumption to that effect. some of us need such proof more than others, and getting paid for what you love to do can provide it. going into business is good therapy for the feeling that there is something arbitrary and idiosyncratic in your grasp of the world, and therefore that your actions within it are justified."
--from Shop Class as Soul Craft, matthew b. crawford
My take on this stems from inner compulsions finally acquiesced to, and later encouragement from Rumi , who perhaps, too succinctly put it as, "Do what you love." Now i think i'm on a mission to communicate. I want to feed the ignorant, and exorcise the gluttons. I need to empower other speakers to re-form the masses to save the planet because i have learned i cannot. i'm not scared anymore. so that's nice. i just don't want to go over anybody's head. i floundered in business because i tried the wrong things. i learned a lot, but lost anyway. in real estate one is always mixing the familial subjective and the pragmatic cold hard truth. unqualified dreamers need not apply. the need exists to let the customer know the truth as market value, but not to be the one who brings it to them, especially without evidence. the offers are greedy the other way until ultimately agreement is begrudgingly reached. in a normal market everyone leaves the table equally unhappy. until further inspection ruins the whole thing and proves the seller(s) to be either idiots or liars. (that dust was not from our old power saw, it's termite caca after all.) so deals go south and some other agent (crass carrion-eater!) gets to deal with this lying sack of shit and make a buck instead of you. in that dim light i approached poetry, trying to make sense out of why we are always trying to save such ass-holes from their own self-destruction. to discover truth? or to print a pretty picture that will reassure them of their own prescient beauty, in spite of a sad and operative case of philosophical myopia. when we should be saying, "Frankly Scarlette, i don't give a damn. your car's a gas hog and your house hasn't been painted since the Big One." [this is not about you! i think of you as a force of pure art. no doubt. i would come to your aid if required in an instant. you must be served and go on! frail soldier!] this is about life and death and the real and the wrong. finding the essence of them all in pyrrhic searching through visions and dreams and setting them down on paper and baked in porcelin buried in sand dunes and constantly pulsing electrons which no one trusts. so below i send you these tiny story/poems, tiny marriges of rock and water, sisters and bothers, trees and seaweed, whatnot and faction...for your pleasure and a how are ya? why not? why now? is it your birthday or something? pieces of taxi something about afghanistan:jimmy.mankind@gmail.com © 2010
Trip 459-2010. old vet, new vet...what you whinin’ for?Wit yer terrifyin’ chemwar and yer spdrs and yer turt-slot-ls in redux? Sheesh!We fought back in the day where they had mosquitos! Fer cry-eye!We didn’t even had no war. They called it "police action." One that cost 50,000 ‘Merikin boys dead and buried. Check it out. All they names on a big black rock a half mile long in DC.That qualify?!So yer stupid winless "war" on terror costs us 5,000 boys [and some grrrls] dead and buried.Desert wars are EZ.I hear tell we both killed about the same # of non-combatants–you call collaterals. Geez-sheets!What kinda word is that?!2 million each.Ours took longer, and they’re still dyin’.Count ‘em. We had 12 years o’ that shit.Course, gotta admit yours’ll die for centuries, y’know, that DU stuff. Un-depleted you ask me. That UDU you do. Voodoo. Sheesh! We used white phosphorous on peephole too.Or you can drop a Daisy Cutter: you go an’ toss some fine spray napalm from a plane and kill ever’body ever damn thing that lives or breathes in a big circle. From six inches deep to twenty stories high. In a dome of death. That’s not war!Don’t know the name...wanna call it a Daisy Cutter.But that ain’t war....
Trip 556-2010. whippersnappers.Young guy gets in my taxi at the airport with his wife and a little girl. He’s got a big black halo ‘round his head on stiff little poles attached to his shoulders. After a better look I can see the "halo" got some sticks stuck right into the skull and same for the shoulders. Sheeee-aye! When he turns to talk, which ain’t often, he has to turn his whole body. So his neck won’t swivel.He’s got the Marine cut so I ask him. He says yeah. Get that apparatus from the Afghanis?Wife blurts up first, "Yes, he did. IED. It killed his best friend and nearly killed him!"Did not expect that outburst.Shrapnel just missed my spinal cord. He explains. By a quarter inch.I look the situation over as we pull out of the airport. Pretty hectic behind us tonite. Pretty wife to die for. I pause to check out with the mag card press it to the reader screen. Look back at the little girl about 4 hugging her dolly. Boy! I go. Sort of losing it. Sorry. But I say, Prettiest little girl I ever seen! What’s your name, angel? I fergit what she said. I flash one more glance at the wife–I swear. By this time. 10 seconds the A-hole driver behind me is honking. I flip ‘m off out the window so the young wife don’t think I’m a jerk. We head out.Spent five and one fucking half hours waiting for planes here. If they don’t get their shit together...I dunno...tomorrow we gotta be in Fresno.Why you gotta be in Fresno?Everybody’s waiting.Relax. I tells 'im. One, you’re a national hero. The airline company is heartsick about your income-vein-ience, and I’m as sure as hell [on this planet is where you came from] about that. They are probably sick about disappointing you. But they do not want to kill you by flyin’ a plane with mechanical difficulties or some other kind o’ danger when you are about two days away from paradise. You hear me, Marine?He looked at me stern and full of macho indignation at me telling him shit. Any kind of shit.Nobody has a better shot at happiness than you right now, I go on. Just look in that back seat! I was not lying and they all knew it. A woman knows how good looking she is...and how good she wants to be as a person. She spoke:He got hit on the road. Just driving along. We are so happy to have him back with us...And she trailed off.I didn’t want this to get saccharine, nor worse, theoretical. For all I knew the wife was a lazy, ego-maniacal heroin addict whore. All I’m sayin’ is she did not look like that...and dammit I wanted it to have a chance as if some dumb cabbie’s tough love i’m gonna add to their chances...and not detract.So I asked him, "What’s goin’ on over there? What’s it like? They never tell us anything.""It’s fucked, he said. The people are fucked. The situation is fucked. It’ll never work. I think we oughta nuke the entire country and bring everyone home. Nuke the whole place!"I felt I was in the tilt position to be able to have some positive input–as a random source of some sort of coincidology. Just one American speakin’ to another.I felt, if not pressure, then the seriousness of my imagined responsibility. Under the gun so to speak.I asked him. You ever hear of Malalai Joya? He said no. Remember that name, I told him.Why?She agrees with you. About gettin’ out anyway. Don’t imagine she’d go for the nuke ‘em part. She taught little girls to read in secret schools. When she was 18. She’s 25 or 6 now. She’s the youngest woman, of the few ever elected, in the Loya Jirga. She rocks, man. She wants us out. She says you cannot bring democracy. It has to grow up from people. She worked to teach girls to read and vote and work and go to school like they never could before.I went on a little roll: teach girls. That’s what you want, I bet. And let girls become all that they can be. Let ‘em learn physics. Become doctors, scientists, architects, politicians. I can’t believe women would have got us into this mess...He said yeah. I’ll look her up. He said the hotel’s name they were goin’ to. Snarled a bit. I said, Paradise. You got one night of paradise TO-night...to decide. Great family. I had loved these guys at first sight. Man, I said, enjoy every breath of free air you get with these two angels. Take that hotel to heart. It’s free, huh?Oh yeah, he goes.Get smart, says I. It’s a holiday. Now tell me what’s it like.You wanna know what it’s like?For sure.OK. We got a report from a farm. The guy had been having trouble with the Taliban. Stealing his food and shit.Yeah?So we convoy up an head out there. It’s good intel. We get into a fire fight, and we chase them away. So it’s over quickly.Kill any?Yeah. Several. I didn’t see the count. Don’t matter. We didn’t get ‘em all. They fade into the hills. So we return to the farm. The owner is an ass-hole.How so?He’s pissed we upset his schedule. Says his goats and cows are upset. Gotta milk ‘em and the chickens are over the place. His wife is crying. The Captain is trying to pacify this idiot. Then in the middle of talkin’ he spits in the Captain’s face.What?!Real a-hole.I look back at the wife. She is nodding at me. Positive. About the vocab-constab-ulary or what? The whole interrogation? This is de-briefing taxi style. I’m into it.What did he do?Do?! He did what he had to do?Kill the guy!?No. He ordered the house cleared. Then he had a tank run over it. Back and forth a couple times.Gees-says.That shuts ‘im up.I bet. Then what?We left.There was a bit of silence there. The little girl was looking out the window when I took a glance in the mirror. She was hugging her dolly and looking out her window at the night. At Millbrae, California, on the bay side of the freeway. Big expanse of darkness off to our left which was salty water.I said, if you got time. You get up early. You go for a walk here cross this street. Big, long park. Goes for miles. I didn’t know that for sure. You can see the birds flyin’ in under the jets. See the jets flying in to come and get you outa here. I hope you come back.Yeah, great.Then it came to me. The farmer. The captain. Had they talked before?Yeah. I suppose they had to. There would have been some questions. How many insurgent? Maybe some directions. I guess. Stuff like that.And it was friendly?I didn’t see that.Y’know. The genius of those two is cool. We pulled into the driveway of a very nice-looking hotel. Wow! I go. I ask the girl if she ever stayed at a hotel before. Unt-huh, she says.[I’m going bananas inside.]But I tell the girl, "You gotta try room service and free movies and order a cokes and try pancakes for breakfast...that’s what you do in hotels. Use everything. Use ‘em up!"Mom was sliding over to the girl’s side to get out. Daddy was pulling an airline voucher for the ride. I’d seen those before. Heck, happened to me one time. I’d had an angel with me too. Gettin’ them together like that, almost out of the taxi, I said to the Marine, "They did it so he wouldn’t get killed.""Huh?"I mean, you guys couldn’t be there all the time. You had to return to base. So the Taliban would’ve killed this farmer if you hadn’t knocked his house down. It was survival. Your Captain only had to wipe off some spit and knock down a crappy house. He saves a family. You got the same choice. Only you won’t get spit on. You get love. You’re the luckiest man in the world. If I were you, I’d wear that thing around your head for as long as it takes to never go back. His wife touched my arm. He nodded. Thanks. Peace, I said. Driving back to the airport and the short line, I almost cried like a baby. Joya. I kept saying it. Thinkin’ how I forgot her first name in the tears...
—o—
--from Shop Class as Soul Craft, matthew b. crawford
My take on this stems from inner compulsions finally acquiesced to, and later encouragement from Rumi , who perhaps, too succinctly put it as, "Do what you love." Now i think i'm on a mission to communicate. I want to feed the ignorant, and exorcise the gluttons. I need to empower other speakers to re-form the masses to save the planet because i have learned i cannot. i'm not scared anymore. so that's nice. i just don't want to go over anybody's head. i floundered in business because i tried the wrong things. i learned a lot, but lost anyway. in real estate one is always mixing the familial subjective and the pragmatic cold hard truth. unqualified dreamers need not apply. the need exists to let the customer know the truth as market value, but not to be the one who brings it to them, especially without evidence. the offers are greedy the other way until ultimately agreement is begrudgingly reached. in a normal market everyone leaves the table equally unhappy. until further inspection ruins the whole thing and proves the seller(s) to be either idiots or liars. (that dust was not from our old power saw, it's termite caca after all.) so deals go south and some other agent (crass carrion-eater!) gets to deal with this lying sack of shit and make a buck instead of you. in that dim light i approached poetry, trying to make sense out of why we are always trying to save such ass-holes from their own self-destruction. to discover truth? or to print a pretty picture that will reassure them of their own prescient beauty, in spite of a sad and operative case of philosophical myopia. when we should be saying, "Frankly Scarlette, i don't give a damn. your car's a gas hog and your house hasn't been painted since the Big One." [this is not about you! i think of you as a force of pure art. no doubt. i would come to your aid if required in an instant. you must be served and go on! frail soldier!] this is about life and death and the real and the wrong. finding the essence of them all in pyrrhic searching through visions and dreams and setting them down on paper and baked in porcelin buried in sand dunes and constantly pulsing electrons which no one trusts. so below i send you these tiny story/poems, tiny marriges of rock and water, sisters and bothers, trees and seaweed, whatnot and faction...for your pleasure and a how are ya? why not? why now? is it your birthday or something? pieces of taxi something about afghanistan:jimmy.mankind@gmail.com © 2010
Trip 459-2010. old vet, new vet...what you whinin’ for?Wit yer terrifyin’ chemwar and yer spdrs and yer turt-slot-ls in redux? Sheesh!We fought back in the day where they had mosquitos! Fer cry-eye!We didn’t even had no war. They called it "police action." One that cost 50,000 ‘Merikin boys dead and buried. Check it out. All they names on a big black rock a half mile long in DC.That qualify?!So yer stupid winless "war" on terror costs us 5,000 boys [and some grrrls] dead and buried.Desert wars are EZ.I hear tell we both killed about the same # of non-combatants–you call collaterals. Geez-sheets!What kinda word is that?!2 million each.Ours took longer, and they’re still dyin’.Count ‘em. We had 12 years o’ that shit.Course, gotta admit yours’ll die for centuries, y’know, that DU stuff. Un-depleted you ask me. That UDU you do. Voodoo. Sheesh! We used white phosphorous on peephole too.Or you can drop a Daisy Cutter: you go an’ toss some fine spray napalm from a plane and kill ever’body ever damn thing that lives or breathes in a big circle. From six inches deep to twenty stories high. In a dome of death. That’s not war!Don’t know the name...wanna call it a Daisy Cutter.But that ain’t war....
Trip 556-2010. whippersnappers.Young guy gets in my taxi at the airport with his wife and a little girl. He’s got a big black halo ‘round his head on stiff little poles attached to his shoulders. After a better look I can see the "halo" got some sticks stuck right into the skull and same for the shoulders. Sheeee-aye! When he turns to talk, which ain’t often, he has to turn his whole body. So his neck won’t swivel.He’s got the Marine cut so I ask him. He says yeah. Get that apparatus from the Afghanis?Wife blurts up first, "Yes, he did. IED. It killed his best friend and nearly killed him!"Did not expect that outburst.Shrapnel just missed my spinal cord. He explains. By a quarter inch.I look the situation over as we pull out of the airport. Pretty hectic behind us tonite. Pretty wife to die for. I pause to check out with the mag card press it to the reader screen. Look back at the little girl about 4 hugging her dolly. Boy! I go. Sort of losing it. Sorry. But I say, Prettiest little girl I ever seen! What’s your name, angel? I fergit what she said. I flash one more glance at the wife–I swear. By this time. 10 seconds the A-hole driver behind me is honking. I flip ‘m off out the window so the young wife don’t think I’m a jerk. We head out.Spent five and one fucking half hours waiting for planes here. If they don’t get their shit together...I dunno...tomorrow we gotta be in Fresno.Why you gotta be in Fresno?Everybody’s waiting.Relax. I tells 'im. One, you’re a national hero. The airline company is heartsick about your income-vein-ience, and I’m as sure as hell [on this planet is where you came from] about that. They are probably sick about disappointing you. But they do not want to kill you by flyin’ a plane with mechanical difficulties or some other kind o’ danger when you are about two days away from paradise. You hear me, Marine?He looked at me stern and full of macho indignation at me telling him shit. Any kind of shit.Nobody has a better shot at happiness than you right now, I go on. Just look in that back seat! I was not lying and they all knew it. A woman knows how good looking she is...and how good she wants to be as a person. She spoke:He got hit on the road. Just driving along. We are so happy to have him back with us...And she trailed off.I didn’t want this to get saccharine, nor worse, theoretical. For all I knew the wife was a lazy, ego-maniacal heroin addict whore. All I’m sayin’ is she did not look like that...and dammit I wanted it to have a chance as if some dumb cabbie’s tough love i’m gonna add to their chances...and not detract.So I asked him, "What’s goin’ on over there? What’s it like? They never tell us anything.""It’s fucked, he said. The people are fucked. The situation is fucked. It’ll never work. I think we oughta nuke the entire country and bring everyone home. Nuke the whole place!"I felt I was in the tilt position to be able to have some positive input–as a random source of some sort of coincidology. Just one American speakin’ to another.I felt, if not pressure, then the seriousness of my imagined responsibility. Under the gun so to speak.I asked him. You ever hear of Malalai Joya? He said no. Remember that name, I told him.Why?She agrees with you. About gettin’ out anyway. Don’t imagine she’d go for the nuke ‘em part. She taught little girls to read in secret schools. When she was 18. She’s 25 or 6 now. She’s the youngest woman, of the few ever elected, in the Loya Jirga. She rocks, man. She wants us out. She says you cannot bring democracy. It has to grow up from people. She worked to teach girls to read and vote and work and go to school like they never could before.I went on a little roll: teach girls. That’s what you want, I bet. And let girls become all that they can be. Let ‘em learn physics. Become doctors, scientists, architects, politicians. I can’t believe women would have got us into this mess...He said yeah. I’ll look her up. He said the hotel’s name they were goin’ to. Snarled a bit. I said, Paradise. You got one night of paradise TO-night...to decide. Great family. I had loved these guys at first sight. Man, I said, enjoy every breath of free air you get with these two angels. Take that hotel to heart. It’s free, huh?Oh yeah, he goes.Get smart, says I. It’s a holiday. Now tell me what’s it like.You wanna know what it’s like?For sure.OK. We got a report from a farm. The guy had been having trouble with the Taliban. Stealing his food and shit.Yeah?So we convoy up an head out there. It’s good intel. We get into a fire fight, and we chase them away. So it’s over quickly.Kill any?Yeah. Several. I didn’t see the count. Don’t matter. We didn’t get ‘em all. They fade into the hills. So we return to the farm. The owner is an ass-hole.How so?He’s pissed we upset his schedule. Says his goats and cows are upset. Gotta milk ‘em and the chickens are over the place. His wife is crying. The Captain is trying to pacify this idiot. Then in the middle of talkin’ he spits in the Captain’s face.What?!Real a-hole.I look back at the wife. She is nodding at me. Positive. About the vocab-constab-ulary or what? The whole interrogation? This is de-briefing taxi style. I’m into it.What did he do?Do?! He did what he had to do?Kill the guy!?No. He ordered the house cleared. Then he had a tank run over it. Back and forth a couple times.Gees-says.That shuts ‘im up.I bet. Then what?We left.There was a bit of silence there. The little girl was looking out the window when I took a glance in the mirror. She was hugging her dolly and looking out her window at the night. At Millbrae, California, on the bay side of the freeway. Big expanse of darkness off to our left which was salty water.I said, if you got time. You get up early. You go for a walk here cross this street. Big, long park. Goes for miles. I didn’t know that for sure. You can see the birds flyin’ in under the jets. See the jets flying in to come and get you outa here. I hope you come back.Yeah, great.Then it came to me. The farmer. The captain. Had they talked before?Yeah. I suppose they had to. There would have been some questions. How many insurgent? Maybe some directions. I guess. Stuff like that.And it was friendly?I didn’t see that.Y’know. The genius of those two is cool. We pulled into the driveway of a very nice-looking hotel. Wow! I go. I ask the girl if she ever stayed at a hotel before. Unt-huh, she says.[I’m going bananas inside.]But I tell the girl, "You gotta try room service and free movies and order a cokes and try pancakes for breakfast...that’s what you do in hotels. Use everything. Use ‘em up!"Mom was sliding over to the girl’s side to get out. Daddy was pulling an airline voucher for the ride. I’d seen those before. Heck, happened to me one time. I’d had an angel with me too. Gettin’ them together like that, almost out of the taxi, I said to the Marine, "They did it so he wouldn’t get killed.""Huh?"I mean, you guys couldn’t be there all the time. You had to return to base. So the Taliban would’ve killed this farmer if you hadn’t knocked his house down. It was survival. Your Captain only had to wipe off some spit and knock down a crappy house. He saves a family. You got the same choice. Only you won’t get spit on. You get love. You’re the luckiest man in the world. If I were you, I’d wear that thing around your head for as long as it takes to never go back. His wife touched my arm. He nodded. Thanks. Peace, I said. Driving back to the airport and the short line, I almost cried like a baby. Joya. I kept saying it. Thinkin’ how I forgot her first name in the tears...
—o—
Friday, May 7, 2010
longing
Longing is the taste of our
gregariousness
lacking.
Longing is nada.
Longing is no response
no call
no one to call.
Longing is the fullness of need at work:
the root of our need to make contact.
Longing is the proof we are human,
of a species
that recognizes our own uniqueness,
our need to be accompanied anyway.
Longing is the impetus for schools
schools of fish
herds and prides
coveys and swarms
flocks and blooms
rooms and brooms
florists
forests and prairies
aeries and oases
partnerships and villages
townships cities and states
nations homes and domes
crones and bones
loans & phones
coffee and scones
busy tones and my jones
for your moans: Us:
Longing is me without you.
gregariousness
lacking.
Longing is nada.
Longing is no response
no call
no one to call.
Longing is the fullness of need at work:
the root of our need to make contact.
Longing is the proof we are human,
of a species
that recognizes our own uniqueness,
our need to be accompanied anyway.
Longing is the impetus for schools
schools of fish
herds and prides
coveys and swarms
flocks and blooms
rooms and brooms
florists
forests and prairies
aeries and oases
partnerships and villages
townships cities and states
nations homes and domes
crones and bones
loans & phones
coffee and scones
busy tones and my jones
for your moans: Us:
Longing is me without you.
Dear Friends, Poets, Cointelpros, Masters of the Universe: © 5/10 jimmy.mankind@gmail.com
>1
All the previous games are over. This is either the end or the next thing to it. The ocean is an organism and it can die. We need oxygen. It needs oxygen. Plant plankton. Life in the ocean is our life. No idolators, ideologues, or idiots need apply. Open your hearts to action.
Our petty individual absurdities are either sublime innoculations against reality or irritating inanities. So drop everything.
Study this event. Know they wish they could do it better next time. [And do it over and over again.] And yes, there is more oil down by the molten core of the planet, where it's so hot our myths tell us the Devil dwells. He, Beelzee-bubba, bathing in our desire.
So great! Soon as we fix this one mistake, let's drill for more! The Arctic anyone?
How about forming a new limited liability Arctic Oil Co [Arcoco? Has a ring to it! Let's have a naming contest! Yo! Miss Palin? Drill Baby, Inc. Maybe you could write that down and drop it off...?]
I hope everyone who reads knows realizes ...something for themselves and their loved ones.
That's all. There are three parts of GOD. The god of destruction (usually of ignorance) and called Shiva.The god of preservations (like say, Greenpeace, the Nature Conservatory) called Vishnu.The god of creation (some say Monsanto is a bad example for its weird new life forms in our crop world) called Krishna.
As we evolve we assume these duties ourselves.We have achieved so far only the first one....
>2
Take the universe, which is laughing immensely at our relentless sense of self-importance.
Here it goes: we begin to tamper seriously. Tamper, tamp, tamp...tamper.
Let’s say they use a nuke to blow it shut, down at the 5,000 foot muddy bottom (there will be blues records about this), and it blows it OPEN! Instead. whoops. Obama immediately resigns and runs off to Switzerland. This is the Danny Glover role.
[An explosion pressed agasinst some resistence will head into the solid. Air or water, in some counter-intuitive reality absorb and cushion leaving no outlet for the fury: now ain’t that a social breakthrough. Maybe it’s why women live so long.]
The bomb blows all the way down into the core--remember we're talking 7 miles deep, and as it passes its fire and brimstone through the vast reservoir of oil, which ignites of course, and then blows like a mad leviathan whale of Mythologic design...it comes up like a huge boil in less than half a minute. It raises the level of the Gulf like a dome–a fast-growing tumor on the face of the Earth, sending a shit-kicking ripple in all directions, ruining everything man ever thought about, every plan, hope/dream, from up-side the mountains protecting Mexico City out through all the islands and across the Atlantic to low-lying Africa, south through most of Venezuela Panama and Columbia--all of Central America is washed over the hill to the Pacific. Up north as far as Memphis, Atlanta, (soon to become Atlantis), and across Texas to the Red River Valley and up the Rio Grande wiping out Ciudad Juarez, the advanced waters lapping at Arizona's high plateau cattle ranches near Bisbee.
So everyone agrees Obama was the lucky one. Minutes after he leaves, Cheney declares himself president, but gets shot right away by about 16 right wing whiners who were still wearing their prizes from the Phil Gramm skinning e-vent held just days before.
The fire won't go out. Radioactive steam just keeps rising and from under the Gulf comes a huge volcano released from the molten core of the planet, sending a putrid smelling mixture of ash, steam, dioxin, gaseous pcbs, and radioactivity up into the jet stream. Oil falls like rain over Africa first, then the EU, China, and around. The air gets so fouled we cannot see the sun from anywhere except Nome..., when the hurricane season starts...augmented by the intense heat of the steaming simmering Gulf of Mexico.
And those cowboys who haven't lost all their fingers already--this gas seems to attack the fingers of the opposable thumbed--begin to write very somber songs about what the angry Gulf did to innocents like the 8 year old grrl in the red dress in the food line of Haiti's pissed.
Californians asleep at their wheels wake up about a week later--not that anybody can keep track of time anymore--to see the Richmond and Sunset torn from the continent in the granddaddy of all quakes. As days and nights run together in murky filthy beige as the carcinogenic defeats the cerulean.
The bars stay open all night due to popular demand. As the laws we liked to groan about collapse we live within our own consciousness of right and wrong from now on out.
Fools get shot quick. No wise asses allowed to power trip. No mas.
An old guy says, waving his gun. i hope there's some one Rip-uglican left out there cuz ima gonna shoot his fuckin eyes out.
No, says the young guy. Hit his knees and knock him down in front of a TV. Make 'im watch what his god hath wrot.
what god?!
his god: the god of selfishness.
>1
All the previous games are over. This is either the end or the next thing to it. The ocean is an organism and it can die. We need oxygen. It needs oxygen. Plant plankton. Life in the ocean is our life. No idolators, ideologues, or idiots need apply. Open your hearts to action.
Our petty individual absurdities are either sublime innoculations against reality or irritating inanities. So drop everything.
Study this event. Know they wish they could do it better next time. [And do it over and over again.] And yes, there is more oil down by the molten core of the planet, where it's so hot our myths tell us the Devil dwells. He, Beelzee-bubba, bathing in our desire.
So great! Soon as we fix this one mistake, let's drill for more! The Arctic anyone?
How about forming a new limited liability Arctic Oil Co [Arcoco? Has a ring to it! Let's have a naming contest! Yo! Miss Palin? Drill Baby, Inc. Maybe you could write that down and drop it off...?]
I hope everyone who reads knows realizes ...something for themselves and their loved ones.
That's all. There are three parts of GOD. The god of destruction (usually of ignorance) and called Shiva.The god of preservations (like say, Greenpeace, the Nature Conservatory) called Vishnu.The god of creation (some say Monsanto is a bad example for its weird new life forms in our crop world) called Krishna.
As we evolve we assume these duties ourselves.We have achieved so far only the first one....
>2
Take the universe, which is laughing immensely at our relentless sense of self-importance.
Here it goes: we begin to tamper seriously. Tamper, tamp, tamp...tamper.
Let’s say they use a nuke to blow it shut, down at the 5,000 foot muddy bottom (there will be blues records about this), and it blows it OPEN! Instead. whoops. Obama immediately resigns and runs off to Switzerland. This is the Danny Glover role.
[An explosion pressed agasinst some resistence will head into the solid. Air or water, in some counter-intuitive reality absorb and cushion leaving no outlet for the fury: now ain’t that a social breakthrough. Maybe it’s why women live so long.]
The bomb blows all the way down into the core--remember we're talking 7 miles deep, and as it passes its fire and brimstone through the vast reservoir of oil, which ignites of course, and then blows like a mad leviathan whale of Mythologic design...it comes up like a huge boil in less than half a minute. It raises the level of the Gulf like a dome–a fast-growing tumor on the face of the Earth, sending a shit-kicking ripple in all directions, ruining everything man ever thought about, every plan, hope/dream, from up-side the mountains protecting Mexico City out through all the islands and across the Atlantic to low-lying Africa, south through most of Venezuela Panama and Columbia--all of Central America is washed over the hill to the Pacific. Up north as far as Memphis, Atlanta, (soon to become Atlantis), and across Texas to the Red River Valley and up the Rio Grande wiping out Ciudad Juarez, the advanced waters lapping at Arizona's high plateau cattle ranches near Bisbee.
So everyone agrees Obama was the lucky one. Minutes after he leaves, Cheney declares himself president, but gets shot right away by about 16 right wing whiners who were still wearing their prizes from the Phil Gramm skinning e-vent held just days before.
The fire won't go out. Radioactive steam just keeps rising and from under the Gulf comes a huge volcano released from the molten core of the planet, sending a putrid smelling mixture of ash, steam, dioxin, gaseous pcbs, and radioactivity up into the jet stream. Oil falls like rain over Africa first, then the EU, China, and around. The air gets so fouled we cannot see the sun from anywhere except Nome..., when the hurricane season starts...augmented by the intense heat of the steaming simmering Gulf of Mexico.
And those cowboys who haven't lost all their fingers already--this gas seems to attack the fingers of the opposable thumbed--begin to write very somber songs about what the angry Gulf did to innocents like the 8 year old grrl in the red dress in the food line of Haiti's pissed.
Californians asleep at their wheels wake up about a week later--not that anybody can keep track of time anymore--to see the Richmond and Sunset torn from the continent in the granddaddy of all quakes. As days and nights run together in murky filthy beige as the carcinogenic defeats the cerulean.
The bars stay open all night due to popular demand. As the laws we liked to groan about collapse we live within our own consciousness of right and wrong from now on out.
Fools get shot quick. No wise asses allowed to power trip. No mas.
An old guy says, waving his gun. i hope there's some one Rip-uglican left out there cuz ima gonna shoot his fuckin eyes out.
No, says the young guy. Hit his knees and knock him down in front of a TV. Make 'im watch what his god hath wrot.
what god?!
his god: the god of selfishness.
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