Attitude

I boarded a small plane from Richland to Seattle and sat next to a fat couple. We flew over the Cascades.

“Hi,” they said.

“Hi. Where are you going?” I said.

The man said, “Oh we’re going to Atlanta and then ... ” his heavy bejeweled wife interrupted, flashing lidded eyes above pancake makeup and perfect teeth ... “and this seating is just terrible. I mean, look at the space on this poor thing. There’s absolutely no room to move. When we get to Atlanta we’re flying first class to London.”

Her white pearl ring would’ve fed half of Bangladesh.

“We own a travel agency in Bend Over,” he continued. “We’re on our way to meet friends in London and then we’re going to sail down the Danube River, drink wine and have the time of our lives. Yes indeed. We’re going first class all the way.”

“Sounds like a relaxing vacation.”

“That’s only the beginning,” he said.

“Say more.”

“After Europe we’re going to an antiterrorist convention in Cuba and then,” his spouse interjected again … spitting her words into an overbooked air tight tin can where syllables floated with half-baked ideas meeting angry frustrated voices complaining about time, weather, seat selection, lack of dietary choices, cramped cattle conditions and the high price one paid to be human … she shut up and her husband sighed ... “then we’re going to China for a tour. We’re going to hit all the sights in ten days: Bee Jing, Shanghai, Xian, see Terracotta warriors trapped in dirt, walk the Great Wall, swim in the Gangster River and prowl open air markets filled with exotic animals like lions, tigers and bears oh my, dying of loneliness and neglect in cages, yes sir ree and you buy them and they’ll cook it right up in front of you. We’ll drink cobra blood. It’s a sexual aphrodisiac.” He rubbed his crotch.

His wife blew more smoke ...

“Isn’t freedom, democracy and free trade with open markets wonderful? Isn’t it a shame these planes are so small. You’d think the FAA would require carriers to operate planes with more legroom. They treat us like pigs. Some pigs are more equal than others, by George oh well ... And, if that wasn’t enough, those smelly immigrant security wage slaves made me remove my shoes and underwear before I passed through detectors. I hardly understood a word they muttered and stuttered. Can you imagine? I need another drink and I need it bad.”

“Yes, dear,” said hubby patting her pasty fingers, “this country is going to hell faster than you can say Osama who’s your mama.”

She inhaled a double gin and tonic. “You be careful whom you talk to now dear,” she whispered. “You never know when someone might be listening. There may be bugs planted on this plane. I need another drink.”

“You worry too much,” he said. “It’s been disinfected.” He got her a double G&T.

“It’s a wonderful life,” I said. A couple of fat happy complacent mediocre Yankee doodle dandies.

“What do you do?” said hubby.

“I work for Death Deferred Ink as a mercenary ghost. I freelance as a wordsmith gravedigger designing mysterious plot projects. Busy 24/7. I’m taking a break from my heavy, deep, real responsibilities. Headed to Marrakesh to meet a friend at a Storyteller’s Convention ... She’s a blind nomadic weaver in exile from exile. She lives in a cave with cannibals outside Rhonda in Andalucía. When someone passes on we strip the flesh off bones for writing parchment ... We grind the bones into sex medicine dust. We sell left over human organs and upright pianos in China. It’s an expanding market with tonal variations on a theme. No women and no kids ... Diversity and flexibility is key. Always be closing.”

This revelation took care of their first class attitude.

ART Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Children in Laos carry the world on their back.

Widow Remembers

In the United States of Amnesia it was all too clear to Marian sitting on the wooden chair in the kitchen staring out a double reinforced storm window into spring’s garden.

She hadn’t slept well. Again. Last night was difficult with perpetual arthritic sore joints and eternal emptiness next to her in the brass bed. She’d stayed under the comforter reading longer than usual this morning. It was a clean sparse room with a thick Persian carpet.

Closets were crammed with clothing she’d give away.

While she had hardcover nonfiction stacked everywhere in the living room, her bedroom reading were intellectual monthly magazines and estate agent ads.

She sat on the chair where Richard sat for thirty-odd years in his frayed blue terrycloth bathrobe perusing the newspaper. He rose early to feed sparrows, bring her the morning paper and coffee, tease and laugh with her, talk and return to the chair.

She was shifting into another reality.

Sparrows arrived at the rusty bread pan feeder hanging from the split brown patio roof. The structure sagged toward earth. Jackdaws, jays and robins patrolled dew diamonds as light shaved crabapple, cherry, maples and elms. She needed to call the mower man. She needed to check the pressure on the old black pump down near the fence. It was going to be a hot day and it was wise to water early or late.

The hands on a grandfather clock above the yellow cabinet lined with medication bottles were dead just after one. A stopped clock is right twice a day. The key collected dust.

She didn’t know where she wanted to live the rest of her life. She was surrounded by memories and basement stuff.

Tons of tools, collectables and junk: lathes, hammers, chisels, planers, boxes of screws and widgets, papers, books, clothing, boxes of seventy-eight RPM records going back fifty years, canned goods stacked on dusty shelves, sturdy battered suitcases, moth balled suits, boxes of vintage wine, shoes, an old broken pinball machine, photo albums, European and Russian travel guides, a forgotten pool table, lumber, a black Singer sewing machine in working order, a crimson pin cushion, needles and spooled multicolored threads.

And that was just part of the mess down there. She never descended anymore. No need or desire. She’d seen it all, throwing up her hands accepting his passion for collecting stuff and messing around, resigning herself to inevitable destiny and retreated to the sanctuary of erudite literature and domestic tasks above ground zero in light and air. She prospered in the realm of intellectual property in life of the mind.

Thirty years is a long time to be with someone. Nancy, the hospice worker was a big help, her stepsons assisted make arrangements. A retired young brother lived north off I-25. He gave her connection and comfort.

Being Steamboat Springs natives they survived the depression in the 30’s by ranching, coal mining and power plant maintenance in Nucla.

Education formed their character. All of them escaped mountains for city schools. Universities gave them the opportunity to use their intelligence. They became engineers, teachers and geologists.

She was a secretary at ARFC in Denver when she met Richard a year after his wife died. She was a single mother and her son Timothy lived in Steamboat taking care of his grandfather until he passed on.

Timothy was in Mensa, had a degree in geology, built a Harley from scratch and resembled Custer. He was a friendly no-nonsense individual in the spirit of the West.

He worked long tough hours on the Western Slope as a supervisor for a mining operation dealing with poor maintenance records, inept management and the frustrations of trying to keep all the heavy equipment up to standards.

“It’s 8,000 miles to the center of the Earth and we’ve only drilled down 7.5 miles,” he said one afternoon to Geronimo sitting on a plateau as sunset light played across red, brown, golden sediment strata.

She knew everyone would help when she got around to making the decision. This chapter in her journey was letting go by accepting the fact she couldn’t stay here forever. The place was forty years old.

She’d sell it and get an apartment on a bus line near shops, a library and friends. She was only seventy and mobile. She didn’t need assisted living.

She missed knowing he was tinkering with something down there. She missed his dry sense of humor. It was going to be a long hot day.

ART Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir

Girl

The girl and her blind father. Music on the street. We met in 2017 and 2020.

Now he plays laments on a broken street hoping foreign eaters will put money in her orange plastic pail.

She positioned him touching the rear of a parked motorcycle for security and trust where he'd be safe.

We made eye contact, she smiled, radiant, older now, taller in a simple blouse, shorts, flip flops, smiling, Thank you.

She moved from table to table. He played a haunting refrain on his simple long neck three-string instrument.

She returned and took the strap from his waist as he played. She led him past hair salons, a closed bookstore, a high end seafood and pepper restaurant, a bar filled with drunk European males.

Music faded in the night.

Canvassing the old market.

Coast Starlight

Singing field holler Clarksdale blues, “Don’t cha know no’thin child?” I channel Elmore James and Robert Johnson by living, learning, laughing and loving.

Standing with my heart in bleeding hands down at the crossroads I traded my soul to the devil to play the blues.

Train whistles blew.

Above platform #5 long neck cranes flew west over Puget Sound.

“ALL ABOARD,” yelled porter Jon. I got on, the door closed and the Coast Starlight slid south.

“This is where you sleep. Upstairs is the observation car. They serve a continental breakfast at 10. Meals are included in your fare. You will be asked if you want the early or late dinner seating in the dining car.”

Train #11 rolled south along the Pacific Coast toward a railroad museum in Sacramento. Historical engines, freight cars, silver diners and big black coal stoking locomotives collected dust.

Construction maps, massive oil murals and Andrew Russell paintings of exhausted immigrants and eastern big shots in tuxedos.

15,000 Chinese workers laid 700 miles of track from Sack-of-Tomatoes to Promise Me A Story, Utah. They shoveled twenty pounds of rocks 400 times a day. 1,000 Chinese died hammering transportation rails. The Chinese built the West, Mormons the middle and Irish the East. The last spike in 1869 connected East-West railroads.

Travelers in the dome liner discussed characters. “He’s three French fries short of a happy meal,” said a Las Vegas nutrition teacher, pointing at a man.

“Eat fruits and veggies to reduce internal temperature for healthy results,” said CC, a doctor from central Mexico. We exchanged books about Eastern spiritual warriors.

CC read my palm lines. “You will come back as a bird, not a snake.”

“I am a screaming eagle.”

Her nails were perfect. “You have a long lifeline.” 

“What do you see?”

“Your fate line indicates either a strong profession chosen by self or higher spirit. You have a strong will and there is conflict with a hidden self in your dreams.”

“I am a higher spirit.”

“The girdle of Venus indicates promiscuity. You have protection. A deep heart line shows a heavy first love. Other deep lines show lots of anger and resentment.”

I nodded. “An early life of confusion, separation, loss, and fear of emotional trust. Abandonment. Orphan heart awareness. Alcohol played a later role with manipulation and trust.”

“You had a lot of turmoil in early life and had to overcome a struggle and nourishment issues.”

“True. My mother contracted polio when I was five. I felt abandoned. It wasn’t my fault however I felt guilty. She had my brother then a sister. I was angry coping with the responsibility, emotional distance and siblings. She became angry and abusive. She died at forty-two. I escaped the house, hitched the country, survived Vietnam and explored the planet.” 

“I see. You are a sucker for love but not a pushover. You are generous and not concerned about money. The height of your little finger indicates a high level of creativity.”

“What you say may not be real but it’s true. Or it’s not true and real. I’m working on detachment and discernment with clarity. You’re very good.”

“Thanks,” she said, smiling. “I don’t do many hands anymore, but I like you.”

Miles of rails tracking open land said hello big world. Spikes lay coast to coast. Labor. Rosie the Riveter sang her song.

“Rosie” was Rose Will Monroe, a riveter on B-29 and B-24 military planes at a Michigan production plant in WW II. She was selected by the War Department for patriotic promotional films portraying a rosy-cheeked woman in overalls working outside the home. Her image was accepted by millions of women and she was credited, according to statistics of American Economic History, with increasing the number of employed women to twenty million in four years.

Named “Rosie” by her male co-workers, she symbolized women on assembly lines in defense industry jobs producing military hardware. After the war Rose drove a taxi, opened a beauty shop and started an Indiana construction company named Rose Builders. She died in 1997 of natural causes.

Rail music sang click, clack, click and clack.

In a dome liner, children ate watermelon and spit seeds into sky. A red haired female magician made poverty disappear. Passengers formed quick intense transient relationships between whistle stops before, during and after industrial wastelands.

We zoomed past small town wrecking yards with cars and trucks collecting rust, abandoned swings, toys, dishwashers, gardens, guillotines, baskets of severed heads, shredded tires and water soaked concave fences collapsing into community soil.

I hammered word spikes while waving to strangers stranded in their present perfect tense seeing trains carry perfect continuous tense strangers into new futures. Down the line riding the rails. Further along the road of iron deficiencies.

At a remote train station a furious man with his shopping cart home and a whiskey bottle in a bag sagged against a brick wall yelling at his slumped wife. Her old sad eyes stared far away wondering how she managed to get herself in this fucking mess away from social services, respect, dignity and love. Her heart knew if she had any common sense any strength or power she’d get up and start walking.

Her dilemma was to find a way out of the quicksand swallowing her life. She was conditioned to having someone save her. She loved being a victim and needed a martyr.

Downstairs in a converted baggage car I met a 15-year old kid going home.

“Man,” he said, “you wouldn’t believe it. I’m from Chicago, the east side, ya know, projects and all that shit and just spent the summer with relatives in Sacramento. Would you believe there are no pregnant girls out there? No guns either. Back where I’m from everybody’s pregnant and you’d better get your ass through the projects after school and home right quick or else somebody’s gonna shoot ya. My poor mom is worried sick every time I leave our place.”

He smokes, pacing the cage talking up a storm.

“Yeah, man, like I go out at night in Sacramento with friends and there were no gangs at all. People were real nice. I couldn't believe it. I’m moving back out there as soon as possible, man. I’m gonna finish school and get out of the projects. Man, I’m telling ya, I learned a lot out there. It’s all about friends and family.”

A wild deep river dancing under a full moon illuminated the boy’s silver shadow.

Passengers in a rolling living room talked about Richmond, Chicago, Washington D.C., Atlanta, and New Orleans. “Wherever this train takes us,” said a man. A retired couple from Philly saw wild Montana after thirty years in Freedom City where he worked underground connecting subconscious wires to the grid.

Clear cold thin Rocky Mountain air quickened blood streams. We’ve enjoyed rail’s clicking clacking trestle music exchanging laughter and awareness. Visions of starlight sky blends with engine headlights shattering blackness. We arrive at Union Station in Denver.

I know the field behind the station where the headless homeless heartbroken hoboes, drifters and transients exist, hide and run for their lives.

It’s a tricky place at night. It runs north way up to the stockyards near the old Coliseum, not to be confused with the one in Rome where they fed you-know-who to you-know-what. Where every cold frostbitten February, cowboys, cowgirls and plain old city folk put on the Stockman’s extravaganza awarding prizes to animals and the field runs south past the main Post Office Terminal annex and westward toward immigrant hopes and dreams up to Federal Boulevard on a rise with a church and laundromats and renovated upscale posh neighborhoods overlooking a gleaming screaming downtown Silver City skyline. The killing field is filled with tall weeds in the Platte River flood plain.

There’s a fine view of the Rocky Mountains from the field amid random acts of pre-meditated violence around small fires as drifters pray to stay invisible long enough to ride rails out of town away from the mean old street.

In the summer, children scream on the roller coaster at Elitch Gardens up on 38th and Tennyson where my aunt and uncle ran a drugstore and pharmacy after WWII. They worked their fingers to the bone, sweated their lives out and never asked for a thing. My aunt was so scarred by the Depression she maintained thirty-seven folders budgeting the cash flow by counting every penny every night.

It ain’t no field of dreams in that big lonely weed choked undeveloped tract of real estate where freights and Amtrak dome liners blow long sad whistles as buttoned waiters serve blood red Colorado tenderloin down wind from the smell of meat grilling at Coors Field where boys of summer play hardball.

The Coast Starlight sliding toward Kansas curves into a space-time bend.

Moon drinks rainwater.

Walking rails I sing with Robert Johnson…“Woke up this morning and looked around for my shoes…I got them walking blues.”

I savor impermanence. Cool blood decorates hot black keys as I bleed words.

ART - Adventure, Risk, Transformation

Act

Chapter 79

War on terror experts discussed global strategies in a play with many acts. A play on (s)words. Some acts were hard to follow let alone comprehend. Reviews would be mixed when it ran off Broadway flagging down a Berber slave caravan inside an air-conditioned nightmare looking for a Caravanserai along Route 66.

“What’s the name of the first act?” asked a playwright.

“Patriot,” said General Consensus.

“How does The Patriot Act sound?” said the scribe, a former loan shark and energy consultant.

“I like it, I really like it,” said Asscroft a general Attorney. He was a neo-conservative hard nosed right wing crazy religious fanatic from the State of Misery. “It has teeth with wide ranging constitutional subversive powers, perfectly timed for our agenda. Let’s push it down the legislator’s throats.”

“Does that mean the gag rule will be in effect?” cracked a comedian on welfare.

“Sure does. Anyone who so much as expresses concern about this constitutional urinary tract act will be blacklisted, hounded, ridiculed, ostracized, and labeled unpatriotic. They will never work again in this great beautiful free country. This is the home of the scared and enslaved. We will revoke their voting rights and cancel their citizenship. I’ve had it up to here with this liberal democratic crap. Our culture is to kill. Take no prisoners. Abuse the hell out of the detainees. Tell the peace makers and tree huggers to take a hike through old growth forests,” Attorney added with a smirk.

“Let there be no doubt about our honorable intentions. We are on a holy mission from God. Our destiny is to install democrazy in the Middle Eats,” said chef Boy R. Dumbed Down Dee, “whether they like it or not. They’ll eat what we give ‘em or starve. This is an ala’ carte, carte blanche military menu.”

“Should we continue bombing?” queried an intelligence asset in deep cover. Plame as day.

It was days, weeks, months and centuries since angels sang after dialing 911.

English hawks warbled about taking the campaign into winter. They needed hawk food. As predators they knew the terrain, the sweet sound of wings whistling through clouds with laser guided precision. Their talons were sharpened by their inherent power and Manifest Destiny. They were ready, willing, and able to establish and sustain new economic empires. They’d raped, pillaged and plundered plenty of old world civilizations and would not be deterred in their quest for more power and influence.

They had the perspective and experience of establishing colonies and global power under the crown, under the gun, establishing The Rule of Law. They were experts at economic terrorism, and exploiting natural resources using cheap labor.

“Yes, absolutely,” said another intelligence agent, an N.O.C. disguised as a cleaning woman with Gypsy blood.

Nonofficial cover was their nom de plume allowing them to work for foreign proprietary front companies while spying. Fronts were numerous: airlines, travel agencies, banks - world currencies and blood - military tribunals and civilian courts, oil and gas companies, construction firms, cafes, telecommunications, land, sea, and air shipping firms, brothels, juke joints, casinos, tailors, clip joints, beauty salons, crematoriums, and mortuaries.

The downside was being left out in the cold if their cover was revealed to compliant sheep citizens and transparent independent muckraking media. They’d be left blowing in the wind. A hard rain would fall. Everyone in the food and information chain was expendable.

A buttoned down butler brought them a mandate for an appetizer and they dug into their personal caves of hunger. They had all the Neolithic or "new science" tools at their disposal. The garbage disposal clogged and someone called for maintenance.

“Maintenance!” demanded a shrill counter intuitive pro-active and very demanding defensive individual named Bumsfeld with lipstick on his collar from a one-night stand. “Get up here on the triple and bring your torch. Stuff happens. It’s the unknowable knowable.”

“Sorry sir,” said Maintenance, “stuff happens and my torch is down for maintenance, if you get my drift.”

“Drift, draft, fore and aft,” said a divorced right wing conservative senator up for erection. He washed his hands of the whole affair in dirty water. Finished, he threw the baby out with the bath water into the world’s endless suffering where 17,000 children died every day from starvation and economic terrorism.

Where 4,000 and then send some more American soldiers named Casualty in Iraq slept their dream of dreams in black body bags.

Agents returned to deep cover operations funneling arms, explosives, communication gear, maps and cyanide capsules to homeless, nameless volunteers.

A Spanish woman in black with an ear for dialogue mopped her stairs and pavement along the narrow Rue Castanets. Finished, she dumped the water into the gutter watching it flow to the ocean, evaporate into clouds and rain flowers.

“This is no time to be surrounding ourselves with incompetents. Find someone who knows the lay of the land,” said a junior fellow named Full Bright on a scholarship. He unrolled a parchment for all the knights to see.

“Now see here,” countered Deli, “what it’ll be gents?”

“Make mine ham on rye,” said El Salvadore from the divan where he fondled his Dali. She was in no mood for this intentional violation of her writes.

“You know I don’t eat meat,” she said.

“Yes my dearest,” said Salvadore, “I’m well aware of your passion for fruit. You are my passion fruit, my darling. We’ll see what they have in the queen’s pantry. Perhaps a nice juicy banana?”

“Yes,” sighed Dali dearest, “peel it down for me. I am a bed rabbit. Elementary my sweet.”

“Yes, darling, he who wants to enjoy a fine fruit must sacrifice its peel. Let’s turn the lights down low and make whoopee.”

Salvador turned to his friend. “What do you make of this Pablo?”

“Hmm,” Pablo said, “it’s fairly abstract standing alone. It needs definition, stronger emphasis, a wider range of implicit specific graphic detail.”

“I agree,” said Salvadore, “perhaps broken orange melting time machines. Dashing surrealistic nature enveloping warriors disappearing into exile, fighting real and imaginary foes is called for.”

“Yes, a nice touch, that,” said Pablo. “Many are called few are chosen. We may consider this, my dear colleague, an experiment, an expanded vision. An extension of a red or blue period.”

“Well put dear comrade speaking of the blues. Less is more.”

“Agreed,” said Pablo, “let’s not put in anything extra or take anything extra out.”

“Such a novel concept,” said Don Q., an unemployed literary agent sitting on a nag and wearing a battered bedpan for a helmet.

“Excellent,” said Salvadore. “My friend Cervantes said the exact words to his companion Pancho. One rode an ass into history. Shall we have a go then?”

“Yes,” said Pablo. “Be my guest. Let’s take a line for a walk with Klee.”

“It’s glee Pablo. Joy. Such a silver tongue you have. Have you thought of a name for your new work my wise friend?” asked Dali.

"Guernica comes to mind,” Pablo said.

“How appropriate,” Dali replied, stroking his exquisite mustache. “It will become a classic. It will connect the wild subconscious and rationality. It’ll make you famous, old boy.”

Picasso’s Guernica commemorated the small Basque village of 10,000 in northern Spain. It was market day on Monday, April 27, 1937. In the afternoon waves of planes from the Condor Legion, Heinkel 51s and Junker 52s piloted by Germans blasted Guernica. Survivors found 1,660 corpses and 890 wounded people in the rubble.

“Be that as it may,” Pablo replied. “Art historians and critics will have their say hey kid. It will shock supporters of social realism and propaganda art in France and Spain.”

“How did you do it?” Dali queried.

“From May 1st to June 4th in 1937 I made forty-five drawings on blue or black paper. I incorporated the bull, the horse, classic bullfighting figures, and the lantern from my 1935 Minotauromachy. I used the weeping Dora Maar because she has always been a woman who weeps. Guernica is a bereavement letter saying everything we love is going to die. And that is why everything we love is embodied in something unforgettably beautiful, like the emotion of a final farewell.”

“I still think your vision aspires to greater heights,” said Dali. “Your work contains fantasies meeting the objective violence of history.”

“You are too kind my dear Dali. People have started talking about your work. Your intentional dreams, so strangely manifested, in the way you have masterfully allowed your subconscious free rein on the canvas. Most amazing, your Persistence of Memory.”

“You are too generous Pablo. I merely reflect the ongoing crisis in society, the surreal absurd nightmare, with, shall we say, a twisted rather sordid but truthful elusive creative beast we must acknowledge to allow our perverse authenticity freedom wherever it leads us.”

“So true my friend, for we are only the conduit of the magic,” said Pablo. “We paint what we see with our innermost senses, born by authentic inner visions.”

“We are the mysteries speaking through the mysteries,” said Salvadore.

“We are ceaselessly redrafting the short story we call our life,” said a scribe.

A Century is Nothing