Random Acts of Memory

Uncle Fear

2011-04-09T10:31:00.000-07:00

sitting in the wet crawl space after moving the cut out carpeted door back in place letting my eyes adjust to the dark listening to the muffled voices and footsteps- heart pounding, waiting to be missed, hoping they forget about me until he leaves...

winter 1978

2011-04-01T10:56:00.000-07:00

the alchemy of mayhem fake hockey fights in the snow can give bloody nose and loose teeth in ski mask like terrorist and snowmobile suit without scarf naked hot neck against the winter and ice covered mitten fists mimic Bruins-Flyers wilding that crawled into beer soaked seats pounding scruffy headed seventies men on wide world of sports as jim mckay melted like a curious caramel in the fire reddened room as dinner smells and soft couch hold in golden drowse after days play-

beatings leave bruises, scrapes, and swollen eye...muscles deliciously quivering with the sweet purity of exhaustion

stomach hollow

waiting to be fed

sounds-1978

2011-03-16T17:25:00.000-07:00

on the lip of excavated basement listening to the dirt clods, the rocks, fall out of time smack- thud- crumble into the cold clay rectangle behind careful steps....

2011-03-06T10:04:00.000-08:00

wawasee like a giant napping, waves get punchy then sleep, we huddle next to the concrete breaker, stomachs pinched with hunger, (water tired,swimming until limbs shake, eyes red from sun and water and lotions creep) can almost smell the food, hear the voices, such voices like you've never heard, tones like canoes, boats cutting water like an act of love(some unconscious temporal birthing), gentle perfect paddles, succinct motion, no where to be, just going through the hot golden bell of the day, kites in famous smiling silvery clouds, as if designed to embrace the hot escaping vapor of our time, then tender feet on the hot tar road, almost there, through the rim of weeds, say hello to the 57 Chevy sitting like Maralyn Monroe by the snaking road, bright bulbous yellow sensuality from a time of mythic American waste and raw goon taste, to the low cottage sitting like a pair of grandmothers stalking to hug, and sandwiches-lemonade-nap time as the adults mix drinks and get loose and loud, the canoes turn into steam ships, the laughter at old stories like a welcome hard rain against a tin roof---later a drowsy pontoon expose of the endless nooks and nestled homes exploding with sultry multi colored lights, cigarettes glowing, talk trails off and we listen to the lapping black water, drink the black maw of lake night and get sleepy, drowsing on the astro-turf floor, no direction, no intention, there is a captain and he is not me and the ancient lake is as big as the far out math universe unwinding like a ragged string, falling away into the black...

summers 1975-86 almost gone remembered impressions part 1

2011-02-27T08:36:00.000-08:00

bored, by myself with gun, thinking of book i am reading, sweating through my shirt, imagining the rotten tomatoes to be war criminals, germans half frozen, trembling outside stalingrad, i line up the rotting fruit in front of the gnarled and scarred willow stump (hatchet marks from other boredoms and pellets embedded from the patio door, from the hip, shouldn't be doing this shots, like before school or during dinner), take a minutes long pause to torture the unrepentant beasts, then fire, creasing them one at a time with my daisy, ten pumps, one pellet missed, the rest, dead on, left them splattered and torn in mushy row, in brown sun dead grass, (try to taste the bitter WWII black and white air, failing imagination) listened to the cicadas steaming invisible, their robot scrape sound, remembering, someone said, when they show up summer is almost gone, vague sickness roils in my stomach, thoughts of classroom torture, the eternal talking hour, waiting for hot summer freedom or spring recess to get fists full of dirt, to spit up at the sun, running until breath is gone, legs of new iron needing to rage the blood frothing from the new bones of eight year old legs, put in line, not allowed to beat and tackle my friends, made to write the school rules for fighting, many times (dunce goon munk frothing), and the girls, so pixy, cute and mysterious like bright alien stars cast in bare less than magical light growing hot unrelenting fear (our faces fall red if eyes are met-afraid to speak), don't know what to say to any of their diamond essences arriving like exploding flowers, screaming "male chauvinist pig!" before bloody shin kicks and snot doll faces twisting like raging shrikes set to kill, what does that mean?, male is cool, the middle word unknown (spoken of in the news) and pig must be bad, what to do? And then summers of confused animalness arriving, later in "the fort" makeshift midget house built by horny boys with molding magazines, cigarettes, beer and soft space beyond the ogre reach of the gray parental deaf hand, guns and beat off times next to the little stream that bled like an anemic suicide, now gone, replaced by whisper shit lane and tv pods, we'd hunker down like dull burgeoning monkeys unaware of the blasting stalk seed rage about to collide with toys and candy mag wheel snack bag concerns, all in the quiet narcotic culdesac drowse where the soft medicated die and love and fist fight in bruised imaginations unable to remember a time of connection to the cycles of earth and random animals, seasons of plenty punctuated by seasons of mass death like in caves, but with air conditioning, lotions, spam...magazines telling them how to do better and what to buy, deranged toys of purple war, riding lawn mowers like elephantitis ass, guns and studies, golf bags like sultan scrotums hold back the Ghingis Khan flub man masks neutered in cubicles, come home to smolder silent like some forgotten bombardiers men from killing themselves too quickly, he can see all who love him as contingent to his being like air, and suspects (although cannot yet believe) nothing resides in the dark corners he will barely let himself notice, some part waits to leap into the gollum maw, nervous, alive like pending lightning in the instant before issue where the sky crackles and the grass expects to be lit, and the hot nights ding dong ditch lightning bug murder with tennis rackets and hour long walks in the giant silence and stuffed streets, burgeoning with empty concise line girth habit, each sealed off in soft comfort sAFE houses like his/her own novel of human now in the purchased lung bag wind that can creep into your head in some grainy black and white 19th century ghost who is still walking the fields he cleared with rotten legs and the essence of decaying wood and Abraham Lincoln myth jaw, heat and drought and tornado unbeaten, ice to kill next to, snow to starve your children, all within sight and sense, then gone again, hiding in the sun brown grasses and the silvery maple, but we are informed, each a song built by these, and millions of other vaporous, illumen, adrift in a sea of gentle trembling vibrations of harvest and farm slaughter, here between the boxes through yards and drives and gardens and shrubs to the dust and burn construction sites to the magic patch of wood and pond and creek babbling vein of chalky water connecting fields with concrete island run off moving cancer into the soil from fertilizer to lymph nodes and cracked jaws, the clay that grows our carrots glows but we have 4th of july face burning finger tearing ear splitting fun all the way from the flat silent wilds of ohio illicit bomb commerce from drowsy cash shacks to the colored raging night sky torn and torn over and over and over and over...

scrape

2011-02-14T20:04:00.000-08:00

brown bit of baseball stuffing burst from the undersized carnival ball spun by the severed flap through the dull evening light, could see the random bit as it entered, scraping the top of my eyeball, like a rooster claw, pressing my hand against my closed eye, hard like trying to pop it back into my brain, dulled the pain, conrad laughing, unaware, punches me in the gut, taking all my air (i would shoot him later, in his pale face,with half pumped pellet gun), I'm down on the concrete, warm like a cooling oven, from the blaze of august bald sky burn, cars pass in the unconscious din of evening drool, home to television, someone honks their horn, that night, eye covered in gauze awaiting dinner, to fill my bruised stomach, afraid to move my eye.

1980

2011-02-05T00:20:00.000-08:00

riding in your car and everything is broken-the passenger side door is lifted when you close it and the floor, something is wrong, maybe a hole or standing water, it's big like a living room and dirty like carnies lived in it and the radio is playing miss you by the rolling stones, we are smiling inside floating all ramshackle and smoke and cracking rubber from the city to the burbs, the cemetery, and then onto highway 14 where you run out of gas, we walk for so long but the time is great big golden time that passes slow and rich and delicious, us talking and laughing about i can't remember what, you made me promise I would never take acid, we are dirty and splattered with paint, a 16 hour day, the ghetto cruiser, my brother, there is barely covered unease, you haven't gotten there yet, maybe a few more years of searching, the road is a fear-filled place and you are just beginning to wake up to new found clarity, i'm a boy with no particular axe to grind just loving this day and the smell of the approaching night.

Omar

2007-10-12T10:28:00.000-07:00

I was sitting at the Ravenna Tavern way back in 2003, drinking beer and filling my lungs with second hand smoke, when I noticed a tall fellow with long hair staring at me. His eyes were intent on something, (later he told me he was checking me out because I looked "like a psycho"). I thought he was an ass tack looking for a date, or a fight. Below him on the floor, sitting calmly, surveying the room, was his dog, a big Sheppard mix of some kind, with a startling, and instantly recognizable intelligence. It was obvious the dog was taking the man out for play time and was patiently waiting for him to drink his fill.

The tall man with the curious stare was Harrison "DJ DOC SUPERFREAK" Rommel, and the majestic pup, was Omar the Great. The greatest dog who ever lived. At 14, Omar recently died in his sleep...we all lost an incredible friend.

Some diads are perfection; Harry and Omar were like Hendrix and his Strat; they were meant to be together. Harry told me he knew Omar was his dog when he sat calmly in his tiny cage as other death row inmates at the animal shelter barked, growled and paced. "It was like he was waiting for me to show up".

Omar was a mountain dog. Harry took him climbing in New Mexico, Colorado and Washington. I went on a "hike", as Harry called our 12 hour torture-fest up Mt. Pugh, with Omar, who chased marmots all day long and sprinted up to the top and back down without assistance on a trek that damn near killed me.

Omar's greatness was many things...but the most unique thing about him was his otherworldly intelligence. When Harry started dating a woman (who turned out to be a pain in the ass), Omar vanished on the morning of her first overnight, and ran to an X-girlfriends house, who walked Omar back to his apartment to find Harry and Miss Lunatic having breakfast...this was Omar's vote on the new flame. Omar could coax a treat out of the most jaded bartender by making his eyes get bigger, so it looked like he was about to cry! He once guarded a disabled child all day long at a park where he could have been rolling in pooh, or chewing on dead things like most dogs; instead, Omar never left the girls side, and would block anyone who approached her. He was practical as well...once jabbing me with his nose until I woke up and got off the couch I'd passed out on, it was his couch and it was noon, time for me to go.

I swear he walked through walls...he could get out of a locked house any time he pleased and we could never figure out how in the hell he did it...my amazing pal, the ancient Buddhist monk in a beautiful dog's body. He will be deeply missed by everyone who ever knew him.

FEET!

2006-10-16T15:13:00.000-07:00

According to the Transportation Research Board, the number of Americans spending an hour or more commuting to work has grown more than 50% in the last ten years. I spent two years working construction and fighting the morning and evening rush hour mayhem. I found driving on four lane highways at five to ten mph annoying and dangerous...but necessary.

Now I work within walking distance of home and quite enjoy being car-less. For thirty minutes I stroll, collecting my thoughts and watching people make coffee, scratch themselves as they retrieve the morning paper, walk their dogs...as I pass coffee shops and bakeries, wonderful aromas fill my nose. I have a favorite tree. He or she is an enormous big leaf maple that stands next to the baseball and soccer park a few blocks from my house. He or she spreads a magnificent canopy over both the street and part of the ball field, playing with the morning light. I say hello on the days I pass. I take a different route every day for the sake of new things to look at...and just because.

Walking wakes you up.

There's no one to get mad at.

You're not at the mercy of the Traffic God who blocks intersections, causes other drivers to go insane, makes lights conspire against you etc...

Use your feet!

Random 4th

2006-07-04T15:46:00.000-07:00

Perfect weather
The sun warms the flesh and the air is infused with a cleansing ocean coolness
The breeze is playful
Leaves are screaming with green brilliance

I meander through Ballard with no destination

A memory comes: Andy Conrad lighting a firecracker in his mouth like a cigarette
The wick, fast as lightning, leaves him a fraction of a second to throw or spit the gunpowder from his mouth

Too late and BLAM!

His lips bleed, his nose is black, the fingers he raised to pull the tiny bomb from his mouth are bright red
He dances the crazed dance of the unexpectedly injured
I am sprawled on the still warm concrete in spasms of laughter watching him

The 4th is filled with memories of pyromania and suburban combat
Bottle rockets, firecrackers, Roman candles and BB guns make for moderately dangerous fun...
There is nothing more pleasing to the pre-pubescent boy than blasting a friend with some kind of burning object...or at least grazing him...ah! the joy of causing minor damage to structures or flesh!

I pass exiled smokers sucking away at sticks of death outside Wingmasters Bar and Grill
Inside the World Cup draws perhaps a dozen shabby looking characters and a few athletes who moan at a very wide screen TV while downing beer and chicken fat in the low light and piss perfumed air...

The coffee shop is packed with various stock characters: pairs of women discussing choices...life choices...food choices...choosing which choices to talk about and deciding if they are really choosing or just settling for someone else's choices (thank you Oprahchrist)....and outsider pensive sorts (like me) gazing at traffic while chewing on pens or attempting to be very pale.....a beard reads the paper, fluffing it in annoyance at something...pierced, bra-less young women fetch baked goods and grind beans....

Everything else is closed

The heat is gobbling up the cool ocean air and I move towards home trying to think of some observation about the 4th of July......

Explosions are fun for everyone except combat veterans and dogs
I've always thought it strange that we celebrate our independence by traumatizing former soldiers
I picture nervous grey haired men locked in closets, clutching pistols, wondering if maybe we could replace bombs and rockets with a traditional sing-a-long or dance....

And i think of food
corn on the cob, burgers, potato and fruit salad, that damn green bean casserole everyone makes, pies and cakes and brownies and cookies and beer and bombs and lawn chairs and and and and bloody flesh burned to perfection for sunburnt, drunk and hungry patriots...........the fat, violent , intolerant masses slobbing in collective gluttony............ and the beautiful ones too

especially the beautiful ones...............

Then I come upon a boarded up building with pictures of Betty Page, Albert Einstein and the Sex Pistols placed in the grimy front window in a wonderful shrine of absurdity...............

Aliens

2006-06-05T21:32:00.000-07:00

My hands are laborer's hands; large, ugly mits with dry, veined skin. I can smash things with my laborer's hands, can violate a guitar with intention, can pick my nose with expert precision...no booger is safe in my nose...can give a decent back rub...but I can't, it seems, fish very well with my land loving paws.

A few weeks ago I went Halibut fishing 27 miles off the Olympic Peninsula in 35 ft Wellcraft with three other men. After an hour long ride that pounded the piss out of me (especially since I was nursing a few cracked ribs left over from Cinco De Mayo), we found the coordinates Capt. Rusty had been given by one of his clients, where we were sure to catch our one fish per person limit in a matter of minutes.

Sure enough, less than five minutes after dumping my three pound lead ball weighted line, baited with frozen fish bits, 520 ft down, I felt the familiar pull, like a pal with something urgent to say tugging at your sleeve.

"Reel him in!" someone yelled. I then began a fifteen minute struggle to commit fish murder.

To my surprise, my hands gave out very quickly. It was like a switch had been turned off. The muscular power in my hands and arms was halved and I wasn't even a quarter of the way through my battle. As I gasped and shouted obscenities Capt. Rusty remarked, "I'd help you, but that's against the rules". I didn't want any damn help. My biggest fear was that I'd lose my grip and his 600$ designer fish slayer would be lost. I had 50$ for gas...losing equipment wasn't in the budget.

The victim didn't seem to struggle against my line, but to hang limp and heavy; it was like pulling up a large piece of plywood out of 500ft of molasses. I struggled and batched, rested and bitched and struggled some more.

After what seemed like a half an hour, mercifully, his green-gray body appeared next to the boat. Gasping for air, my arms useless rubbery flesh, I gazed down at him anxious to see what he was. As I was making out the size and form of him, Capt. Rusty, balanced next to me (as the boat rocked and careened) thrust a harpoon through the poor creature and pulled him up out of his home and onto our boat in one quick murderous maneuver, where he removed the harpoon and began clubbing him on the side of his head with a small steel pipe. The Halibut gagged for life, opening his strange mouth as if a sound would issue forth, but there was only the sound of me chasing my breath and the other men whooping and cheering me as he bled around our feet and succumbed.

In no time three more fish between thirty and fifty pounds were harpooned, clubbed and stuffed into holds on either side of our boat. Soon we were ankle deep in bloody water that sloshed and splashed around us as the boat danced and bowed in the swells. Capt. Rusty surveyed the situation, bloody sea water trickling off his nose. Every few minutes one of the doors would rise and fall as our catch wriggled and jerked with echoes of life. My stomach, though medicated wanted to leap out of my mouth, so I gazed at the horizon as the others rested and discussed where we could go to catch some Cod.

I was done fishing. My fingers were unable to perform the delicated operations needed to switch weights, lures and baits...thus I was reduced to a fishing invalid and my mind drifted off from the tasks at hand. I left the others to the killing and couldn't stop thinking about my hands and their alarmingly quick loss of power (as I watched the others I soon discovered I was using the wrong form, all arms and no leaning and reeling, leaning and reeling, using weight instead of brute strength). I felt as meek as a kitten marveling at the outrageous power rolling and crashing all around us. I was a feather being tossed by the furies, a speck of drowsy dust on the tip of a sneeze.

My hands throbbed and we were lifted on a tremendous swell like the ocean took a deep breath. Capt. Rusty started screaming, it was a Grey Whale rolling on his side perhaps 50 yards from our boat. I was awed by the size of him and instantly concerned for our safety...Are we going to get smacked by that monster? My ribs were very tender and each unexpected lurch of the boat made me wince. What if we get thrown out? I couldn't swim with these ribs and my ruined arms, and what good would it be if I could swim, we were on our own!

The ocean has no sense of rhythm...at least not where we were. Capt. Rusty said "She doesn't know what the hell she wants to do today", as waves crashed into each other to form larger waves only to be nugged into submission by a gathering swell. The Gray was spotted again off in the distance and I relaxed as much as I could, trying not to look into the boat to keep from being sick.

We pounded around for three or four more hours in vain looking for Ling Cod. I was content to gaze at the giant cliffs near Rialto Beach as we worked our way back towards land. I pondered the last few minutes of my Halibut's life. Maybe it was getting close to lunch in his world. There he was, lurking about in the darkness, feeling a tad peckish when he saw what looked like (or smelled like) lunch, and the next thing he knows is the sense of being pulled, probably a first for him. As my arms reeled and reeled, he could feel my stregth waning. At some point he may have thought whatever force was pulling him was about to expire. Then there was this foreign light, then a piercing pain as the thrusting harpoon was sent home...then what? Was there pain...terror?

Back at La Push we docked our boat, got measured by a young woman who worked for the Government and ambled up a slippery plank to the cleaning station where men stood around in groups of three or four, cleaning the days catch and eyeing everyone else's. "Nice fish" a guy said to me as I carried the 30lb victim to his last station.

An eccentric Indian boy was pretending to be in charge of the place. I say eccentric because he spoke with a slight British accent and used a fake sing songy high pitch voice. I've never known a Native American to sound British so I kept my eye on him out of curiosity and because there was nothing else for me to do since the fingers in my left hand were numb and useless.

The boy fetched plastic bags from inside a small shed for us to put our meat in. "Here you are gentlemen" he said like a limey waiter. I watched Capt. Rusty deftly dismember my victim and felt a slight sense of shame for having murdered him, and an even deeper sense of shame and regret for not cleaning him. It was disrespectful, and made me look like an ingrate.

The British Indian boy played with the Halibut carcasses, skillfully removing organ systems, laying them out on the ground and examining them. He found a half digested fish in my victim's guts and held it up for me to see before tossing it to the crazed seagulls fighting and shrieking over discarded flesh. As I watched these giant birds swallowing large pieces of fish matter whole, a Sea Lion swam underneath a gull and swallowed most of him before thrashing him from side to side, completely obliterating the bird as his mates gazed upward to the heavens hysterical for more heads, innards and soft, slippery flesh, unaware of his demise.

As we left town, sitting in the back of an old Chevy pickup we saw a battered Ford upside down, fifteen feet up in a craggy dead tree with both doors hanging wide open like the wings of a dead bird. Tribal police stood outside their cars gazing at the truck like it was an alien craft. There was no ambulance, no one being arrested...just perplexed repose.

I watched the dilapidated homes file past as we drove slowly towards our cabin. There were no residents visible. It seemed like a ghost town but for the fishermen from out of town coming and going, towing giant boats; wide shouldered men in ball caps with thick wallets and coolers full of beer.

I thought of the curious, weird little boy who didn't seem to know who he was, holding up the yellowing eyes of my fish's last meal, the vicious power of the ocean and the savage, unromantic struggle for survival that teams all around us. And having glimpsed some of the larger, timeless, and terrifying realities we have managed through technology to run away from, I was, for the first time, fully aware of my complete and utter removal from them.

We are aliens.

2006-05-23T12:39:00.000-07:00

Slaughterhouse Fay

I saw a man walking a pig down Market St. today. The distinctive gate of Mr. pig and his gentle "groink" barely audible above the traffic, bought forth a series of memories from my childhood...

If you follow Indiana state highway 14 several miles west from the house I grew up in, the subdivisions give way to singular ranch houses and farm fields. Eventually you will cross highway 9 and just beyond there is a long dirt drive that used to lead to Fay and Edna White's farm (the land has since been sold).

I was around ten years old when my parents left me with the Whites while they enjoyed a long deserved vacation alone....the following are fragments of memories from that time

Fay, minus one ear (lost to a corn picker), big as a barn with massive hands, was a gentle man with a musical voice he rarely used. I don't remember anything he said, just the sound. Fay was kind and warm like a well built fire and was always on his way to do something like all farmers. You saw him in passing, usually carrying something.

I was awakened before dawn to eat the biggest breakfast I have ever seen. Edna, large and sweet as cream, Must have been up for some time preparing eggs, sausages, corn cakes, hashbrowns and toast in enormous portions. We stuffed ourselves, washed it all down with cold, fresh juice and made for Fay's 18 wheeler sitting dirty next to the barn in sticky tire waked mud...already loaded with hogs...who made sounds and smelled ripe and ready for delivery.

My excitement faded as the great hulking beast belched black smoke and we lurched and bounced to the highway, the roar of the engine scouring my ears. There would be no radio...just gear after gear, light after light, no talking...just highway and the empty expanse of fields and barns and clumps of trees.

Still painfully full we stopped for doughnuts. Fay placed an assorted dozen on the dashboard and wolfed them down in between shifts. I ate one somehow and started thinking about our cargo. Do they know what awaits them. Obviously they don't, but what if they could? Maybe they'd stage a daring escape attempt while being offloaded...perhaps concentrated ankle biting and sheer numbers could overwhelm us.

We made our way into Ohio and unfamiliar landscapes. The road began winding and hills appeared. I was sinking into a kind of hysterical boredom not uncommon in childhood when trapped in an adult time frame without the ability to be preoccupied or to escape. Each second, every bump in the road that caused the cab to bounce wildly, was pure torture.

Suddenly we turned off the road into a large yard half filled with other big rigs. There was a run down looking house stuffed with big men in flannel shirts. We settled in for the biggest hamburgers I have ever seen and wide cut fries and apple pie. I wanted to stay, to avoid the rotten endless torture of the road.

By early afternoon we arrived at a small whitewashed building where our cargo would be slaughtered. I had almost forgotten about them and their fate, consumed by boredom and anger at my captivity.

And what about them? I suddenly felt that I was just like a goddamn pig...I was carted around by adults, told what to do by adults, forced to stand in line at school, allowed outside into a large field for small portions of each school day.....my pals and I....like talking farm animals.....

I had always hated the regimentation of school....and for the first time it occurred to me that being controlled by others, being controlled by other people's clocks and whims.....might not end when I was finished with school.....I was sour as hell, feeling the distance from home and the strange automation of the world that becomes invisible....just "the way things are".

I watched the piggies trot down a dirty wooden ramp through a greasy flap to awaiting knives and felt ill...not out of pity for them...but pity for us.

Fay seem relieved. He joked with a man behind a sliding window, signed some things and returned to the truck with a large white package.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Dinner", he said.

Back at the farm we gorged on pork steaks and then retired to the TV room to watch the Waltons. Having been pounded into exhaustion by the suspensionless rig and the days caloric intake, I sprawled out on the floor, grateful for the television's static numbness.

I kept dozing and lost track of the story line. As John Boy learned some bitter life lesson, I looked up at big Fay to see tears streaming down his face.

He sniffled into a hanky and said "Mother it's time for bed".