author
biography author website: The Iron Horse Salon–“Thinking
is Patriotic”
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I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.
- Nathan Hale
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!
- The Talking Heads
Chapter 1:
Sunday, late afternoon. My
biographer and I are reading the newspapers and taking in the Central Square
wildlife. Our vantage point: a sidewalk café, on the first really warm day of
the spring. Last winter was almost a throwback to old-time New England winters,
when snowdrifts topped stop signs and you could walk past your own brother on
the other side of a snow wall and never even know it. The score so far: one
fender-bender, one bum fight, a dude on a three-wheeled bicycle who wails like
a siren as he rides, a few knock-out women, and one ugly dog. Pug or some damn
thing. My biographer sips his coffee and turns his face to the sun. Our table
offers the best possible exposure to passing automobile fumes. I turn the page
of my newspaper.
"Here comes Mickey,"
I alert him.
"I don't care. There's no
scene for him to wreck."
Right. Mickey is the most
desperate in our single older dude, no-girlfriend crowd. He hasn't had a woman
in ten years.
"One time man, I swear,
I’m at Park Street Station and I’m having a great conversation with a girl I’d
just met, and he’s standing outside and he sees me. And when I pretend not to
see him he starts hollering my name, and when I ignore him he runs over and
starts blabbering. And she takes off before I can even get her phone number. I
was sooo pissed."
My biographer turns to catch
the sun evenly, eyes closed.
"He just changed the whole
dynamic," he mutters.
My biographer is a tall, lanky
dude. Women like him, but he can be a bit short with them if he thinks they are
stupid. Or anyone for that matter. I tell him he must control this if we’re to
improve our social lives. Find out where the parties are, mingle with a better
class of woman. If you don't like one, maybe she has a friend. Just relax.
That's the ticket.
"I really liked that
Miriam last night."
He’s talking about the post-doc
from Northeastern we met at an art reception, who was with a friend.
"She's really smart and
fun," he mumbles, half dozing.
Which is fine, but for one
thing: Miriam was mine. The other girl was his. I approached Miriam and we hit
it right off. I can see it will come, someday, to a mano-a-mano between he and
I. Ah, well, that is life. May the best man win. An Indian named Cochise will
toss us each a knife under the broiling desert sun, and he’ll say to each of
us: You understand, white man? And we will say: Yes, Cochise, we understand.
But I can’t kill him yet, I
have need of this man. Today we must prepare him for his foray into the field.
Mickster walks up. He starts right in.
"Just came from church,
met a girl and we were talking for a long time afterward. We walked together to
Park Street and when I ask her for her e-mail, she says: naw, I get enough junk
e-mail as it is."
My biographer and I laugh but
Mickey isn't laughing. He stands in that nervous way of his, hands jammed into
the pockets of his denim jacket, sort of rocking back and forth, talking too
fast, tripping over his tongue.
"Hey man you're in my
sun."
Mickey shifts over, away from
my biographer.
"Isn't that mean? And she
goes to church! A church-goer!"
I’ve tried to help him. But he
has a desperation women can smell. He’s tried everything, church, personal ads,
singles dances. Futile. He has been on a thousand dates, all dead ends. He’s in
his forties and his style is this corny Sixties thing. An "End Sanctions
on Iraq" button, retro John Lennon glasses, and corduroy pants that are
too short. Flooders.
"What's wrong with me
guys? What am I doing wrong?"
That's what you do wrong,
Mickey, you talk too much. But mindful of his good qualities I remain silent.
All he wants is a girlfriend. Poor bastard.
"Mickey did you ever join
that gym?" I’m only trying to be helpful. Mickey has a big beer gut. Which
is kind of unfair, because he doesn't even drink. All the drawbacks and none of
the pleasure. I’ve been trying to tell him, as tactfully as I can, that women
don’t want to hook-up with a guy with a big beer gut. It’s just not a turn-on.
He’s balding and does this comb-forward thing with his hair, which is better
than a comb-over, I guess, but not by much. In another of his stories a woman
tells him his bangs are crooked. He ignores the hint about the beer gut this time.
"What gets me isn't the
rejection, guys, well yea that gets me too, but why are they so mean about
it?"
It's true. Some people have a
"kick me" sign forever pasted onto their asses. Mickey is one of
these people. I’m hoping he has something to do. I know my biographer considers
him a downer.
"I could be feeling fine,
and by the time I’m done talking to him, I'm always depressed," he told
me. I used to feel the same way, but lately I’m more amused than annoyed by
Mickey. He’s my on-the-spot, front-line, in-the-trenches witness to another
bloody battleground, the battle of Love in the New Millennium. As in war, he
has seen things no man should ever see. Last week he got a walk-by. He
explained what this is.
Walk-by: you make a date
through the Internet, neither of you has seen the other. Not in person. Maybe a
picture. She says meet her someplace like the Bon Pain in Harvard Square,
someplace open and neutral. She says stand or sit near the front door, what
color coat do you have, all that. At the appointed time you sense someone
looking at you, eyes circling at a distance. Discreetly. Checking you out.
And if they don't like what
they see, they keep walking.
"A walk-by. Personal ads,
singles chat rooms. Happens all the time."
"Like a low-level pass
from a reconnaissance plane," I said.
"Right. Like a drive-by
shooting. But it's a walk-by shooting, straight through the heart. A
walk-by."
An idiot in a Camry hits his
brakes and lays skid at the intersection. Probably tailgating while talking on
a cellphone, the yuppie swine. We all glance over but there’s no thunk! of
impact. Nothing this time.
Today Mickey has an agenda,
thank heavens. He’s off to meet a woman-friend for coffee. She keeps him
on-call, to fill short, unaccounted-for slots of time, between really important
dates. He allows the indignity, so he gets no sympathy from me. They tell him
flat-out they’re not interested, not that way. He knows he has a craven,
disgusting desire for any female company he can get. He knows he is a fool. He
bids farewell and hurries on. Good. There is business to attend to. A woman
walking a little yapper dog passes by, the dog’s little legs a blur of motion.
"That's no dog dammit, why
doesn't she get a real dog? Like a Nepalese Ridgeback Hound? Or a Giant
Schnauzer?"
"Courageous dogs,
Schnauzers," my biographer answers, "Ridgebacks too."
"Must cost a fortune
keeping that thing alive," I say, "she wants a big dog, not a little
dog."
My biographer dons his leather
jacket, bought second-hand after his last one got ripped-off at a Rainbow
Gathering. The air has freshened a bit. It may be a cold night yet.
"That's about the right
size for a Rottweiler snack. A tidbit," he says.
He adjusts his chair to the
shifting sun. I study the huge, gray Mausoleum-style post office across the
street, about right for its function, to convey permanence and state authority.
On the other hand, the wrought iron bars over the windows give it a bit of the
county jail look. Apt, perhaps. There is no authority without punishment? The
state-as-jail? Jail of the mind? I push this aside, to ponder later. I would
put the question to my biographer, but this line of thought could badly
sidetrack him right now.
"What about the
camera?" I am scanning my mental checklist. A bandana soaked in white
vinegar will be about all he can bring for the teargas, goggles are out of the
question at the border search. Loose, thick clothing will soften the impact of
rubber bullets. A little.
"Better to buy it once I'm
in. Any cheap 35 millimeter disposable will do. A camera at the Canadian border
might tip them off. They could deny me entrance."
"Good thinking. That's
just the sort of thing those bastards will be on the look-out for."
Those Nazis will be pulling
clothes out of travel bags, throwing them to the ground, heavy psych
intimidation, checking every zippered pocket on every duffel bag that reaches
that striped crossing gate for two weeks.
Oh ho what have we here, well looky
looky here, a camera. Gonna take pictures BOY what was you gonna to take
pictures of? What do you think you are, some kind of ARTISTE? Tell you what
BOY, this here is a sub-ver-sive cam-ee-ra, so how about you turn around and
haul-ass home! We're stamping your passport NEIN!
And they would. Unbeknownst to
the rest of the world outside the Movement, the cops can do anything they want,
especially when it comes to security operations for the Trust. All people
suspected of having an opinion will be turned back at the border. They did it
for Prague. And they are doing it for Quebec City.
Long hair huh? Sorry buddy, you
look like trouble. You all go, they'll say, pointing to a nice
Christian-looking couple. Have a nice trip, hear? YOU stay. He points. Then
they stamp your passport persona non grata, so it's no use to try your luck at
a different crossing. Of course, if you’re a known rabble-rouser, say there’s a
picture of you holding a banner or a megaphone at the Battle of Seattle, two
years ago, they have already been looking for you. There is no way you will get
into Canada.
The hair we anticipate. After a
visit to Collage Hair Styles next door he’s the picture of a fine young man.
Still, my biographer, at six four and with green, wolf-like eyes, draws
attention anywhere. This is a disadvantage. We need him to be a midget with a
perpetually cowed expression and a halting, uncertain gait. But there is no
solution for this.
Or is there? I’ve been drilling
him to look at the ground submissively while his bags are checked, like a
beat-down peasant in El Salvador before a jackbooted jefe at a roadblock. Si
señor no señor, gracias señor gracias. He’s a difficult pupil, groveling not
being his forte. If his ugly temper gets the best of him, the mission will be
blown.
"How about a press pass?
What newspaper you want to be from?" He actually does write for a
newspaper, a small one, but may as well be creative.
"If a camera will keep me
out, a press pass definitely will, you idiot."
"Maybe, but once inside
the country, it might get you into the conference center. To report from the
inside! What a coup!"
This one could cut both ways.
In the end he nixes the press pass. It’s his call, his ass on the line. We
could make a nice one on a computer in about ten minutes, laminate it, but we
stick to the original plan of passing him off as an ordinary jerk-off in every
respect. Nothing to call attention. Once the shit hits the fan, it’s unlikely a
press pass will help anyway. It will be every man for himself.
Holly walks past our sidewalk
table and sings out a hello to me. I met her on the Hill, where they put me on
my present bouquet of happy pills. I think she likes me, but I’m afraid of her.
Another woman walks talking to no one in particular. Let's face it. This is
Central Square, Mental Square, Cambridge. People talk to themselves here. It’s
humbling to think that so many people must have more interesting conversations
with themselves than they think they would have with me.
Why are we doing it? Because
globalization is the World War II of our generation, street action our risk.
Not real bullets, true. No risk compared to what dad or old grandpa had to
face. But our job just the same.
When there’s a job to do, an
American soldier just does it. I shall remember this line for my next address
to the men.
I consider, briefly, resigning
my commission and starting my war all over again, as a member of the Black
Bloc. Our elite battalion. The foremost experts in civil disobedience tactics.
Street combat. Because the cops will attack first. Some say the Black Bloc is
infiltrated with undercover cops. This is a murky world.
A la Colonel Kurtz, Conrad,
Heart of Darkness, all that. Just quit being a general and go to paratrooper
school and eventually go off to become crazy in the jungle. But not before
having maximum impact. I ask my biographer what he knows about joining the
Black Bloc. Where do you submit your papers?
"Forget it man, you're too
old. You gotta be able to hop on this table here from a standstill."
I eye the table. A good three
feet up. Agile.
"They're mostly
kids," he says.
"In D.C. I saw four of
them, the cops had them trapped up in a statue. They had just draped it with a
banner. Four guys, and they jumped off that statue, all at once, right over the cops’ heads! In four
different directions." With his thumbs and pinkies extended he shoots his
hands apart over his head, showing how the jumpers scattered.
"The cops chased but they
hit the ground running, got lost in the crowd. If I had a camera I’d be sitting
on a Pulitzer right now. Damn."
Washington D.C., April 14,
IMF/World Bank, an historic day for the human species. The People now
stretching and yawning but well on their way toward Wakefulness. The shots fired at the Battle of Seattle having been
heard around the world. He examines something on the back of his hand. Probably
a fur patch that will begin to expand as he transforms into his werewolf state.
I wonder who his victim will be. Some poor asshole in a rowdy bar he draws into
making a wisecrack about his white, slouch, country dufus-looking cowboy hat.
Which he wears expressly for this purpose.
"Ignorant assholes. Preppy
fucks. Like they got a right to make a comment about my hat," he’ll say.
My biographer hails from El
Paso. He doesn't understand these people.
Finally he heads to his night
job, some overnight counselor gig at a halfway house. He doesn't like to hang
around waste cases on his own time, but he has a curious natural sympathy for
them. In America, you set yourself up with a Section Eight apartment and a
disability check, for being a drunk-slash-substance abuser, and you’re all set.
Meanwhile people on the street who are really crazy, too crazy to get help,
never get it. It's a great country. About half the people on the street need
real help. And about half just need a swift kick in the ass. That’s what one
friend of mine says, anyway, a woman on the streets for a couple of years but
who pulled herself up, the hard way.
I head back inside the coffee
shop. It’s a bit chilly again. This is the time of year you are sweating in
Bermuda shorts one minute and freezing your balls off the next. An Asian chick I’ve been pining for stands just outside
the doorway, smiling and talking into a cellphone, tormenting me deliberately
with evidence of her rich social life, from which I am utterly excluded. My
last two attempts at striking up a conversation having fallen flat.
I could go for a big
sausage-and-egg grinder, sub, hero, hoagie, whatever you call it, depending on
which side of the Mason-Dixon line you’re on. The music in the coffee shop has
gone from the most excellent Bob Marley to garbage can lids again.
Instead I go to Sari’s Falafel
Kingdom, a tiny mom-and-pop falafel sandwich shop, where I can get a falafel
sandwich with extra tahini sauce, to go. As I open the glass door and walk in,
Sari, the owner, looks up and says, "Amigo!" Like always I answer
back "Sadiq!" -- the Arabic word for "friend," which he
taught me. I place my order, pay, and wave good-bye. I go across the street to
the community television station, where they have a public computer room. I
want to check my mail.
Damn that Mickey.
One night, at his house, he
showed me these horny loser websites. He does them all the time, makes dates
that way. I sat scrolling through pictures, morbid fascination urging me on.
"Hey how's about this
one!" I say.
"That's bait, Wheatgrass
Man. That’s someone else’s picture, and if you respond you get directed to a
phone sex site, or some kind of barely legal prostitution. The rule is, if it
looks too good to be true, it p-p-p-probably is."
Finally he sucked me into
answering an ad from a dame up in Marblehead. Looks great from the picture.
Forty two. Her name is Tammi, at least that's what it says:
I like adventure, working out, sports, music, the
arts, philosophy, romance, reading, writing and reaching for the stars. My
male friends think I'm sexy and mysterious, my
female friends think I'm loyal and elegant. I'm not afraid to fight for the
underdog. And I like peace and love and all that
jazz.
All that jazz? I read on:
Looking for someone in excellent shape, handsome and
rugged, with a working brain. Someone with rhythm! Dangerous on
the outside and a real gem on the inside.
Hot damn!
Now here I am, wasting time,
valuable time away from the Movement, checking this stupid e-mail. All Mickey's
fault. I click open my "mailbox." There’s a message back from
"Tammi":
Demi-god and poet? Can one bank on those assertions?
Jesus, I forgot. To answer an
ad, you have to create one, so you can have a "mail box" and a code.
I was just goofing, wrote the first silly thing that came to mind. All of one line. Now I write back:
Why do men think you’re mysterious? The sexy part I
can see. Maybe the demi-god poet stuff was a bit exaggerated, but at the
least I am a Renaissance man.
I look around the computer
room, self-conscious. I hope no one sees me doing this.
It’s time for me to head to my
own job, telephone fundraising for various do-gooder organizations like Ban
World Hunger and Save the Baby Penguins and such. It pays the bills. During my
break I telephone Miriam, the Northeastern graduate student from the art
reception last night. She acts kind of funny, not all that friendly. Maybe she
senses that I was confusing her for someone else, drunk as I was. I didn't like
her that much anyway.
From Chapter 4:
I hop the subway to Harvard Square, to sit in the outdoor
plaza at the Bon Pain and read the papers. Inside the subway car an ad for a
cable TV company shows a picture of an open refrigerator, shelves bare but for
a grody old slice of pizza and a jar of salsa. The cutesy-clever caption reads:
Being a student, you can live without a lot of things.
Cable TV shouldn’t be
one of them.
Underneath someone has scrawled, in magic marker:
Yeah! Stay dumb! Stay mesmerized!
Feed your brain all-you-can-eat crap!
And one day historians will get
it right on the real Clinton legacy, besides giving us the low-point in
American history – "depends on what you mean by the word ‘is’", Jesus
save us -- and that is the merger of the Democrats into the Republicans. The
final consolidation of the Southern Bubbas with the Rockefeller Elite. Which
has been happening for a long time, you understand, but no one had the heart,
even among scoundrels, to sell out so much of the country for his own ambitions. That is, until Bill Clinton.
Our party is gonna start winning
agin’. We’re gonna say, more military, more big business, and blame everything
bad on welfare queens. We’re gonna beat ‘em at their own game, and what it does
to the country don’t matter. Long’s I get to be pres’dent and get laid like a
mother! YEE HAW!
And don’t Bill love that
camera.
From Chapter 8:
Early reports. Joy! Preliminary
skirmishes. Already! It’s only Friday night! They’re not waiting for tomorrow,
the official date of the conference. CNN broadcasts images of people swept off
their feet by water cannons, late into the night. Doing it, hot and heavy.
There is no other way. Sixty thousand, one
hundred thousand, any number of peaceful protesters marching the
designated "parade route," miles from the conference, would have been
routinely ignored by the media. We have learned this.
From Chapter 14:
My biographer is back in town,
but I’m distracted today because today is Tuesday which means tonight is my
date with Anna. When I see him in Central Square, he’s standing on a corner,
planted in one spot and looking down, his brow furrowed like he’s thinking
about something . He sees me.
"Jesus man, there’s a fire
engine going one way, a police car going the other way, and an ambulance parked
in front of us, picking up a passed-out homeless guy," he says.
He points his fingers across his
chest and shakes his head. The sirens fade. No one else on the street is even
noticing.
"You look like shit," I
say.
He has giant crow’s feet and
looks a little green around the gills.
"That's because I've been
running on coffee and adrenaline for four days, I think I've had about three
hours sleep. Total."
He pulls out a bottle of cough syrup
and takes a hit.
"Goddamn tear gas."
“What about the vinegar and the
bandana?”
“Doesn’t work.”
He wants to have his full report
ready in the next few days. He’ll print a thousand copies, tabloid newsprint,
self-financed, and put it out wherever he can.
Also on his agenda is calling the
woman he met at the museum, Clarissa. I mention Anna. I tell him about our
rendezvous with a couple of margaritas.
"Fun," he says.
“She’s the right one. I can feel
it.”
“So don’t screw it up.”
That’s what motivation and a plan
will do for you. Weeks ago, we set out to improve our social lives, do
something besides sit on our asses in the same old bars, drinking beer with the
same old assholes, reptilian creatures deprived of sunlight who when you walk
in turn and stare until they lose interest. Now we’re mingling with a better
class of woman, as Woody Allen says. The little pervert.
From Chapter 16:
In the old days you called it the
blues and got on with things. As one of my kooky cohorts put it, you were depressed,
but you still went to work.
“Shit man, they didn’t put you up
in no apartment, give you a salary, and do psych experiments on you, very
profitable I might add. You got up in the morning, went to work, went home and
did whatever you had to do to get through the rest of the day.”
Don. Crazy as a hoot owl, but
very smart. Not an unusual combination at all. He works, same as me.
Sitting at the bar that time and
trying to explain things, he suddenly grabbed a napkin and scribbled:
$$$
PRISONS
HOLLYWOOD
PSYCH MEDS!!!$$
He slapped the napkin down in
front of me and jabbed a shaky finger at it, looking at me with those crazy
black eyes. Doesn’t blink much.
Like that explained everything.
The napkin. Funny thing is, it sort of does.
From Chapter 19:
I have capitulated. She always
stops to say hello when she sees me, mostly in the coffee shop, very
friendly-like for a long time now. Holly, the woman I met on the Hill. The
Hill, the pretty place on the hill, lots of green, rolling grass and nice men
in clean smocks.
Buying Property in Belmont.
When you ain’t been seen around
town for awhile and people are wondering where you are, it might be that, after
a promising start on "independent living," you are back to Buying
Property in Belmont. The town where the Hill is.
Maybe they think your goddamn
dopaminergic reaction is not "normal." Off-kilter. Screwed up. And
when that is screwed up, you are screwed up. Maybe not enough seratonin on the
brain.
Seratonin, that’s the good
stuff, the stuff you want enough of, sloshing around in your head, and if
there’s not enough you can be prone to bleak despair or manic activity,
sometimes one after the other like a friggin' ping-pong ball. You react too
strongly to stimuli that does not warrant that strong reaction, or you may not
react strongly enough to stimuli that does. Perhaps not enough lithium in your
blood.
Lithium: what they put you on
when they’re tired of screwing around with you. The heavy hitter. Too little,
and the dopaminergic reaction, L-dopamine on one side and seratonin on the
other, does not run properly. Too much and you die.
We were mere acquaintances on
the Hill. She got there after a breakdown that came after some pretty bad stuff
in her life. That’s who they like best. Everyone has a limit, a breaking point,
and shit happens, and when it happens it can happen in twos and threes and
fours. Death of a family member or members. Change in marital status. Sudden
illness. Financial meltdown, sudden homelessness. Discovering that your husband
is a child molester. All of the above. What happens to some people in this
world is un-friggin-believable. I know I don’t need to tell you that.
Then the breakdown. Maybe you
lie in bed all day, stop eating. Drug and alcohol abuse. Engage in behavior that
is a threat to yourself or others. Undiscriminating , dangerous sexual
activity. That’s when they call the Roto-Rooter man. The specialists.
They like these cases best
because it’s something that can happen to anybody, and after a while you’re
well again. Professionals able to conduct their lives once more, doctors, lawyers, good old Betty Ford. We love ya
Betty. These are the success stories in the business.
The Hill: a little bit of
everything, spoiled rich kids looking for something to be, and having daddy pay
for doing the kook thing is easier than getting a job. Most people pay pretty
big bucks to stay on the Hill. Our self-worshipping, self-absorbed culture of
materialistic narcissism. Me me me. Big deal. Then also, the poor slobs who are
truly whacked, troubled, insane, who would be anywhere else if they could.
It's not as if there wasn't an
attraction between Holly and me even on the Hill. She is pretty, intelligent,
and single, and I’m sure plenty of things crossed both our minds. They did
mine. But it’s a not smart move for two people to jump into something when they
are weakest. Not that there’s not a lot of screwing around going on at the
Hill.
I’m leery. She manages to work
into our short, how-are-you-doing chats how very lonely she is, and looks me
straight in the eye while she says it, so there’s no mistaking what she’s
getting at. Her face is small and sweet, and there’s something vulnerable about
her. That’s what I’m leery of. I don’t want to get sucked into another thing
that has me all ass-backward and upside down staring into space over a screwy
chick with whom it is doomed from the start. Last time it took me a year to
recover.
Then, one night, I ask her if
she wouldn’t like to meet me at the Middle East for a glass of wine. Just hang
out for a while. We sit at the bar and I get a kick from her big laugh, from
the way her hand shakes when she lights a cigarette, which makes me want to
reach out and protect her.
It doesn’t take a rocket
scientist to guess where the evening led. When I ask her does she want to come
to my house, she says yes. She smiles and blinks her eyes a little, like she’s
surprised I’m moving so fast. I’m even surprising myself. Yes, she says. And
now I hurtle headlong toward my doom.
From Chapter 25:
Next day, Saturday. I lay awake
in bed not wanting the sleeping to be over, feeling like whatever it is I don’t
want to face, if I don’t open my eyes it will go away. I feel one of those
where-am-I-going, what-am-I-doing jags coming on. Will any of this make a damned
bit of difference? Where the hell is my guru? It hits me that I haven’t seen
the old man in months.
Everyone SUCCESSFUL!
Classmates, brothers, sisters, friends, I come from a ridiculously successful
family, and I love ‘em to death, but there the similarity ends.
Grow up! Get a job! Doomed
street-level politics. I’m too old for this. But is that it? All there is? End
of story? All she wrote? Something nags at me that it couldn’t be. The world is
the way it is and there’s nothing you can do about it, so fuck it? What the
hell kind of life is that?
I flash on Archbishop Romero, a
priest goes into the Salvadoran countryside, square and un-hip, telling his
flock to worry about spiritual things. Politics is not the answer, my children.
Then he looks around and sees the shit going down, starved and brutalized
peasants, well the next thing you know ol’ Jed’s a millionaire – comes out
spewing social justice and liberation theology. El Salvador had a way of doing
that to priests.
Maybe I should join the Peace
Corps and dig wells in some Third World country, save the children one at a
time. You’re so damned smart and want to help humanity? Go to medical school.
Ease the pain. I mean, those guys are okay, but am I missing something? Did I
read the papers wrong? This is big! Why isn’t everyone dropping what they’re
doing and rushing into the streets, or running for Congress? What is it about
the words "global catastrophe" that folks don’t understand? Then
again, maybe Kurt Cobain was right, maybe the people with the power don’t
really care. Maybe after Vietnam and coming that close to saving the world the
baby boomers went on to become the most selfish generation ever produced.
There are plenty of good
doctors, plenty of Peace Corp volunteers, and still things suck. Helping the
poor that way is like shoveling shit against the tide.
The children aren’t dying
because there’s no food or clean water. They’re dying because it’s being kept
from them. There’s a bumper sticker: When I give a man food, they call me a
saint. When I ask WHY he has no food, they call me a communist.
IMF, World Bank, guardians of
the International Agribusiness and Natural Resource Exploitation Department, no
longer held together by the glue of the British monarchy but by the Breton Woods
dollar and the CIA Golpe Department. And, ultimately, the 82nd Airborne. My
biographer seems to understand all this.
Arbenz. Vargas. Allende.
Mossadegh. All replaced by various versions of the Shah of Iran.
I walk down the street to the
library and log-on to an e-mail conference of state Greens, lots of bickering
and intrigue, bruised feelings and nitpicking about by-laws. Good! This is what
democracy looks like!
Maybe I should run for
something, but no one believes a nut case. I’ve blown it there. Can't have no
fruitloop with his finger on the button. Coke-heads maybe, but not a fruitloop.
This country has high standards. But still I can work for the Movement.
After an hour I log-off the
e-conference and decide to relax and think, enjoy the rest of the day. I stop
at home and do a couple of hits of grass, one for my head and one for the road.
El Salvador, $12 billion in
U.S. guns and money in the Eighties to keep peasants in semi-starvation. Not
counting weapons sold to that government by Israel. El Salvador, Ronald
Reagan’s nightmare on his Judgment Day.
Noam Chomsky:
People are not just killed
by death squads in El Salvador -- they are decapitated and then their heads are
placed on pikes and used to dot the
landscape. Men are not just
disemboweled by the Salvadoran Treasury Police; their severed genitalia are
stuffed into their mouths. Salvadoran women are not just raped by the National
Guard; their wombs are cut from their bodies and used to cover their faces. It
is not enough to kill children; they are dragged over barbed wire until the
flesh falls from their bones, while parents are forced to watch.
Yessiree, the American Dream,
reward for virtue, hard work, grit, and a dose of good old fashioned
neo-colonialism. Like being born on third base and thinking you’ve hit a
triple. Five percent of the earth’s population hogging twenty five percent of
the earth’s oil, forty percent of everything else. A cut of the action like
that doesn’t just happen, Jack, in the mob or anywhere else. A cut of the
action like that has to be enforced.
From Chapter 36:
Beginning Arabic classes at the
Cambridge Center for Adult Education sold-out, full. Harvard’s Middle Eastern
Studies department reports overflowing classes, a first.
Christian Science Monitor: A
displaced Islamic school in Columbus has found an unusual new home - a
Congregational church. For the next several months, nearly 130 young Muslims
will learn about the Koran and the prophet Muhammad at First Congregational
Church. In late December, vandals caused $100,000 in damage to the city’s
oldest mosque. But within hours, donations and letters of support flooded the
mosque, members of other faiths condemned the attacks, and Christian churches
and a nearby synagogue offered to house the center’s Islamic Weekend School.
God how I love my country.
From Chapter 30:
The eerily silent night skies, once alive with rhythmic red
lights, the pulsing synopses of a giant central nervous system, the most
magnificent
economy in the world. Silenced.
Shut down.
Fighter jets over Central Park.
…Enough of this talk. There is a way back. Hear me my
words. Then, my message delivered, I can gladly die. Hoka hey.
author biography author website:
The Iron Horse Salon–“Thinking is Patriotic”
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