She wonders why her nation’s men don’t look at her,
Mere laughing and don’t consider her,
It is because they are legends here,
For their large size in a cold land,
They see no need to pick that which can be picked at home,
So she sleeps on midsummer’s eve,
Seven flowers under her pillow,
Snapped three centimeters up from the earth,
By the neighboring girl in concrete block 209,
Given to her to put under her pillow,
Pillow of pickled herring,
Because she grasps her pillow too tight,
In hands that are washed over and over,
Dreaming upon a pillow of pickled herring with seven flowers underneath,
Will bring her a husband,
Who watches her feet,
And knows when to hit the sabar and when not to,
And is always a good man for swaggering down to the beach,
To pick a fine fish to be stewed in the manner of Dakar,
For something less than a kronor,
Peanuts replaces cream,
Atlantic where there once was the Baltic,
And a table dressed in indigo
I stayed at the same hotel in which David Carradine hung himself just a short while ago. The Nai Lert is the nicest hotel I’ve stayed at in Southeast Asia. At the time I was working for an equity mutual fund that wanted to invest in a low-cost flash chip maker in Thailand. As I had been through Bangkok a few years before while passing on my way to the southern islands for scuba diving, my boss felt I was somehow more qualified to take the trip to that steaming cauldron of a city and its Malay neighbor Singapore. The firm booked two nights at the Swissotel Nai Lert.
I’m not a big fan of Bangkok. The last time I had been there on vacation I earned a nasty cough from inhaling all the exhaust billowing from the dense traffic of taxis, tuk-tuks and tourist buses. My throat had been so raw I found I couldn’t breathe the pure air in my tanks without sudden and violent bouts of coughing, and this was discovered at one hundred feet under the surface of the South China Sea. So no, I wasn’t looking forward to the three-day due diligence jaunt.
But the Nai Lert was beautiful and the air was better than I had expected.
Now the Nai Lert is in a nice part of town nearby Siam Square. These are not the slums of Bangkok, nor are there many working people living here. Mostly the population is made up of transient westerners, embassy and hotel support staff. On my first morning I woke up early, still suffering from lag, ate a full breakfast of french toast, melon and cantaloupe, and then made my way to the lobby to rendevous with the car the company said it would send for me. After about twenty minutes of waiting it was clear the car wasn’t going to come, and all the taxis were being pre-reserved for the numerous nocturnal entertainers, some women, some men and some not-so-anchored either way, who seemed to have been released from their cells above, trickling down through stairwells and elevators to the molasses-like flesh conveyer that is Bangkok morning traffic.
After five more minutes, I decided to start walking toward a taxi stand I had spied the night before a few blocks to the east. Doing so I passed through an alley with deep gutters, the type common in Asian metropolises which suffer sudden downpours in the wet season. In these gutters were men, all men with physical bodies misshapen by what I believe to be leprosy. Where these men should have possessed arms and legs, there were stubs of various lengths. I believe the reason they were in the gutter and not on the sidewalk was because it eased locomotion, the gutter being essentially a curb with a 90 degree angle upon which their stubs could get traction.
I walked toward the lepers thinking they would not leave the security of the Bangkok gutter, but as I neared, several looked up at me, some with ghostly eyes cursed with glaucoma. They popped out of the gutter with bowls clenched in their teeth looking for some trifle or coin from me. I wasn’t more than two hundred feet from my soiled plate of french toast and maple syrup.
I didn’t know what to do then. I could spread a few Thai baht here, some more baht there, but there would always be more upward pleading and flagellating through gutters so as to deliver more bowls at my feet. The whole thing sickened me, though at the time I couldn’t figure out exactly what about it did.
I dropped a few coins and stepped over a few more bodies - you had to step over some of these men the way they strategically placed their torsos across the earth between me and the taxi stand. I did finally get a taxi which delivered me to the flash chip factory fifteen minutes late. Over apologies and tea, the company’s CFO and I watched as the line workers started their shift with ten minutes of Tai Chi led by none other than David Carradine captured in digitized video glory moving with both grace and strength.
So this is what I think now. I ask myself why would a guy who appears healthy and centered both spiritually, mentally and physically through training and meditation, a guy who I believe wasn’t hurting for money or fame (if he cared about that) or the affections of a sweet, probably younger thing, would hang himself from some appendage of the Nai Lert.
I think he might have stepped over those same lepers. Maybe his car didn’t show up on time at the set and he decided to stretch his legs only to discover a little bit of hell on earth. Some people don’t know how to handle that. They feel way too much for their own good. I didn’t know the man but he seemed like the type to keep things silent and bottled-up inside until those spears thrown at him by shaolin monks, those tiger blows, those swift strikes of bamboo staffs and that burning cauldron that the uninitiated must embrace, all those things made him numb and scarred up inside, so numb that parts of him began falling off. And what good is a five-star dragon death strike if you don’t have the arms to pull it off?
I’ve been playing around with a service called Scribd. Through them I’ve published a short collection of bursts from way back in time. Feel free to download yourself.
A syringe of lidocaine before it starts to get better.
A rightful stimulus to render an appropriate response.
The aftermath is a planned better.
The hour just before dawn
it may not seem like it will get better.
Far from it but
It does.
Homes in foreclosure will often lead to
something better
but the good is years away
and unavailable now to thrust stormed minds
and racing hearts into happiness
Some times reduce you to ash
before you had planned on becoming it and then,
like the debut drop falling on your head from a
leaking roof
the better comes,
unannounced,
and this was after
you were ash for only a lucky short while.
It is good when that drop falls.
But you still get all that came before that.
The White House Medical Unit, the US government office responsible for the medical needs of White House staff and visitors, is preparing for all possible outcomes of this November general election. That includes a McCain presidency. The unit is poised to revamp its facilities in case the Republican ticket prevails.
“We’re a top-tier facility as one would expect considering that we are charged with monitoring and maintaining the chief executive’s health,” said Dr. William Haas, Colonel, United States Air Force. “But we have to stay one step ahead and be prepared for every contingency.”
Staying one step ahead includes a modernized crash cart equipped to handle such conditions as stroke and cardiac arrest. Across from the elevator whisking the president between his living quarters and the oval office, a new room is being prepped for a cutting-edge, multi-million dollar CT-MRI-PET scanner.
“It’s the top of the line and will not only help us diagnose disease before it becomes a problem but will assist in real-time emergency procedures such as endovascular treatment of stroke and coronary blockage. Such treatment needs to be conducted within the golden hour,” Haas explained.
The golden hour is a term in emergency medicine used to describe the short window physicians have to treat neurological events such as stroke before severe or permanent brain damage occurs. For cardiac events, there is more time to stabilize patients such as the president, though it is more likely the doctors and medical technicians of the medical unit will move the patient quickly to Bethesda Naval Medical Center.
“There has been some talk of installing a high-speed patient conveyance system using a mag-lev track that runs between the unit operating room and the Marine One medivac landing zone on the South Lawn, but we’re still waiting to see what happens in November and if there will be any room in the budget for that,” said Haas.
Dr. Haas also added that several other improvements to the facilities are being considered including a special broadband link between the unit and other essential offices in case it became necessary to exercise the 25th Amendment. Also under consideration are coded locks on the pharmaceutical cabinets, especially for cabinets storing powerful pain medications.
“Again, we are trying to think of every possible scenario,” he said. “I’m confident we can become practically a world-class trauma and rehabilitation center within three months if we are called to be that.”
A few good times before it ends. He soon rests suspended and unexpected in a frozen morgue. Body shivers inside a slanted tomb both wet and hardened, because that’s what water does here. The chill doesn’t damper his dream of the embrace a week before. He made love to the woman. He communed with her lips. Formaldehyde as any professional in the field would tell you, is not necessary in this unique concordance of climate and depth. She allowed him to enter her to an acceptable depth, measured and proper considering the number of dates they had enjoyed and one she did not. The death record should indicate the cause of death was by avalanche, but nobody official has ever written that before and they all agree to asphyxiation. Her hips provided a point of reference upon which he could fix himself and balance down upon her like he had seen rocks balance, arranged so magically in urban gardens. They pay professionals to balance rocks like that. Professionals are needed to extract corpses from back country frostbite parlors, using hoists and helicopters and spirits hardened with morbid experience. Did the last moment of ecstacy between him and her happen in a La Quinta or at a Best Western? And at what elevation did she envelope him? He can’t recall what floor though the synapses still fire for some time. Electricity travels with less resistance as he approaches absolute zero, so thinking moves very fast. Thus all this remembering of her breath against his neck, warm and wet and soft and wet and warm. Rigor is something beautiful like a good joke found with nobody around to whom to tell it. She has a great ass he guiles his glove. And nipples are not just for babies he tells a tree trembling alongside. He feels like running naked down to mount’s base for some hot chocolate and marshmallows. Doesn’t the world think that would be worth it Seeing him lope naked down the slope, his flesh clinking between his legs like an icicle between two greying pistons, and if only the world would value such absurdities The world would make sure he would be only inches from the top and that hot sun. But he’s down deep, she’s reading about him now and the world isn’t having him any more.
Submission to the CL Literary & Writing forum Passing Time project
Will it be the tango or the paso doble? Two men sit across from each other at a maple conference table overlooking the Potomac. One scratches something down on a cocktail napkin, a figure with many zeroes, and passes it across the table to the other, his french cuff brushing the polished top. Who knows how the cocktail napkin (where are the cocktails) came into the picture?
A glimpse down. The figures roll around in his mouth like an incantation.
“To be wired to a Swiss account?”
“As soon as you lower the value of a life to $6.9 million.”
A moment’s hesitation and then a nod of approval. This is how it’s done on the beltway. People in the know call it the K Street waltz (okay, so it’s a waltz.) When the Environmental Protection Agency dropped the value of a single life from eight million to something south of seven, a lot of money was going to be made.
Someone has to start making money first.
Those that did were wearing this . . . the Classic French Collar (No. 2505), made of the finest cotton from the Nile Delta, this shirt is worn by both Wall Street and K Street types, and even EPA technocrats with fat Swiss bank accounts.
Pearl buttons. Single-needle throughout. Men’s sizes: S, M, L, XL, XXL.
Colors: Blue with White French Collar - a classic look. Any other combination . . . well, it wouldn’t be a classic.
Page 2
He was a simple bus driver with a hankering for the life of the gentleman hunter. Those Minnesota woods called out to him on the eve of every open season. Though he was still a bus driver at heart, a regular Ralph Kramden, he could afford a better rifle, a better car and a bevy of employees/servants to carry his equipment and ammunition up and over those hills and down into those valleys in search of that prize trophy to hang on his wall.
He was an unsteady shot and bagged little more that a four-point buck, but he always looked dapper in his Tweed Shooting Jacket (No. 2106), the same classic jacket worn by English gentlemen hunters in the Scottish highlands.
His lack of skill at the hunt was more than made up for by his talent at dismantling electric trolley lines like the Pacific Electric Red Cars in Los Angeles. Mass rail transit would become little more than a memory, a page in a scrap book that your grandheirs might point at and ask about.
“Grandpa, what’s that?”
“Why that’s an electric trolley we used to get around town on just after the last big war, but some big companies ripped it out and made us buy their buses and use their gasoline.”
Where did the Pacific Electric trolley go?
To the moon, Alice, to the moon, on a stack of crisp Benjamins as a matter of fact, all padding the profit margin of General Motors and Standard Oil and Firestone Tire.
In the grand scheme of things, be the hunter not the hunted in our Tweed Shooting Jacket (No. 2106.)
Men’s sizes: S, M, L, XL, XXL
Color: Grey
Page 3
OJ with a splash of Tia Maria. A gentle breeze slides off the Carribean. Sunrise isn’t too early to smoke a Montecristo No. 4 is it?
The sights, smells and tastes betray the presence of real movers and shakers here. Back home they are accustomed to living and working in what they call the “nose bleed” section of the risk-reward curve. They are the men, and a few women, who manage hedge funds.
No, they don’t have calluses from clipping at bushes all day. They generally pay people to do that while they sit, watching the market move up and down, bothering to look away from their Bloomberg monitors only to make a quip to their associates about oil futures.
In the Caymans, at the annual pow wow of fund managers (invite only), the living is easy and their attire shows it.
The Viscose Jacquard Linen Jacket (No. 2609) is tailored to let that cool trade wind in but not let market cap value out. Jackets like this are worn by a different breed all together.
Men’s even sizes: 38 through 48
Color: Blue with Creame stripe
Page 4
“Where did your watch go Senor Lansky?”
The man doesn’t answer but only rubs a pale strip of flesh around his wrist. The man’s first name is Meyer and you know the rest . . , a man of considerable means though you’d be pressed to get him to admit it.
The watch?
It’s a Cape Cod 1936 (No. 1107) with a havane crocodile strap. Senor Lansky feels naked without it, but it was an acceptable sacrifice given the dire circumstances. He gave it to a hot blooded idealist named Fidel Castro just an hour before in exchange for one more week to get his affairs together in Havana, make arrangements for passage to Nassau and transfer a fortune to various shell companies and sheltered bank accounts back in the Old World.
Yes, it was an acceptable sacrifice but one that doesn’t sit well with him. Why don’t you see for yourself how hard it would be to part with your own, even for half-a-fortnight of financial freedom?
The Cape Cod 1936 (No. 1107) comes with a matching crocodile skin humidor box. Tick, tick, tick . . . time is running out both for you and him.
Submission to the CL Literary & Writing forum Seven-in-Seven project.
The old reservoirs were deep
so there is no sleep
and no time to conspire in the temple
So much depends
upon
a shovel in the hand
of a child
glazed with rain
water
culture
and
dragon boats with no life jackets aboard
just buoyant ideas
Keep the line taut and the fuel tank topped off
You shouldn’t wear glasses because they make you
unworthy to your sister’s
eye
and foreign words are discouraged
because the rice doesn’t know them
and won’t grow
at their whispering
It’s our water culture
and his great leap forward
from a ramp built on the skulls of your brothers
lower your eyes so that he sees you don’t weep
For that old reservoir is deep
And no time to sleep
And no time to make plans in the temple
“What do you do down in that hole?” I would ask my mother.
“I catch up a lot on my reading,” she said.
“What do you do down in the hole other than reading?” I asked my mother a few days later.
“We have a ping pong table,” she said. “When I’m not reading I play ping pong with Lisa.”
“What do you do down in the hole when you aren’t reading or playing ping-pong?” I asked my mother a few days after that.
“We practice doing our job. We call them drills, like you should practice your multiplication drills,” my mother answered.
At this time of frequent Q & A, I was eight years old, my brother five, and my mother was part of a grand experiment in how to better protect the United States from nuclear annihilation. Captain Hudson was a missile woman who swooshed effortlessly between the surface world of mediocre report cards and Cub Scout den meetings, and the subterranean realm of launch and command duty of a Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) silo.
“What do you practice down in the silo?” I asked after one of our den meetings. I slid off my itchy, bright yellow scout kerchief.
“Lisa and I practice turning keys and checking codes against other codes,” My mother looked annoyed with my question. Tomorrow she was going back on alert and down into the hole for a three-day shift.
My mom’s back-and-forth duty lasted for six years and was part of an Air Force program called Project Hera. The idea of putting mothers down into ballistic missile silos was born from a fear among the high brass that men were not fully dependable when given the duty of turning the keys to launch their Minutemen and Titan II rockets. Launch would be requested via an EWO or Emergency War Order on the occasion that all-out thermonuclear war were to break out. One four-star suggested that perhaps mothers, threatened with the potential vaporization of their own children on the surface, would more likely launch the missiles in a timely fashion, perhaps early enough to catch their counterparts in the Soviet Union still mulling over whether to launch their own missiles from their holes in Siberia. Thus Project Hera was born.
During alerts, my school teacher father did his best to raise us with help from nannies supplied by the U.S. government. I was well cared for and the Air Force saw that I didn’t fall through any cracks or down any holes.
Mom was still a very present and engaged parent. After she slid out of her uniform, she would effortlessly take on the uniforms of wife and den mother. Both mom and dad would help me on school projects such as dioramas and adding to our growing fleet of model rockets - our family hobby and the most common activity of our cub scout den.
I recall being so proud of a two-stage rocket my mother and I built. It took us over two months to build and perfect the design, and we were hosting the debut launch for the whole pack out on the air base’s soccer field. Dad set up the launch pad while mom hooked up the wires of the ignition system to the battery in our Volvo wagon. The rest of my friends had taken up their positions behind large pieces of plywood, anticipating a large and fiery debacle. Mom had the arming and ignition switch in her hand while we crouched behind the open door of the Volvo.
10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . . 7 . . . 6 . . . 5 . . .
Capt. Hudson handed the switch to me, saying, “This is your launch, not mine.”
I turned the arming key and pressed the launch button even before the rest of the den reached “2.” The rocket shot into the blue, and we never found it again even though the pack searched the neighboring forest until the darkness came and young guts began growling.
So it was with great amusement that thirty years later, while walking with my mother back to her Volvo station wagon after attending our democratic party precinct caucus, that I again asked her that same old question.
“So what were you really doing down in that hole?”
Mom just looked at me. We were both fatigued from the confusing caucus process and our discussions with our precinct neighbors of who would be best to take that 3 a.m. phone call, whether the most qualified would be Barack or Hillary.
“Lisa and I would mostly talk about you and your brother. We wondered which one of you two would marry her daughter first.”
I have a faint memory of Capt. Lisa Bonasera’s daughter, though I can’t remember her name. We moved from that Midwest air base many years ago.
“Would you have done it mom?”
“Done what?”
“Turned the keys and sent the missile on its way.”
“Of course not.”
I was shocked by the abrupt answer, her admission of insubordination.
“Why not?”
The newly assigned legislative delegate for Hillary Clinton looked at me again, this time with a bemused scorn.
